Just a few.
• My December brainteaser. Here’s a worked solution (two, actually).
• A wrong righted. I have had some cordial email exchanges with a STEM academic, Professor of Engineering at a very respectable state university. The subject of interest here is the mathematician Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805-59), concerning whom I have an endnote in Prime Obsession. Here's the endnote:
31. The pronunciation of Dirichlet's name gives a lot of trouble. Since he was German, the pronunciation should be ”Dee-REECH-let,” with the hard German ”ch.” English-speakers hardly ever say this. They either use the French pronunciation ”Dee-REESH-lay,” or half-and-half it: ”Dee-REECH-lay.”
In August 2007 my correspondent, Prof. X, sent this:
I write about the pronunciation of Dirichlet as you discuss in Footnote 31. I teach courses in solid mechanics, and have had this problem for years. I am hoping that you can tell me if respected mathematicians (even one will do) use the German form that you state in the footnote. If so, your footnote will go in my syllabus along with my own small effort to right the terrible wrong that has been foisted upon Herr Dirichlet.
I replied:
Thank you, Prof. X.
I think the ”hardly ever” in my footnote was too generous. Should be ”never.” No, I have never heard the German pronunciation. Absolutely everyone seems to say either ”Dee-REESH-lay” or ”Duh-REESH-lay,” or occasionally ”Dee-REECH-lay,” with the German ”ch.” The only GERMAN mathematician I ever heard say it, Ulrike Vorhauer, said ”Duh-REECH-lay.” (Though she was speaking English at the time.) Grrrrr.
That was in 2007. Then this past December—which is to say 16 years later—there came a follow-up email from Prof. X.
I had lunch with a colleague last week. He is an expert in computational fluid dynamics and he has a daughter about to enter college to study math. I have an extra copy of Prime Obsession that I asked if I could give to her. He of course said yes.
I then told him the story of Footnote 31. He was amazed. He had been using the ”other” pronunciations for years in class. He told me that this spring, he would correct that error.
Between me, him, and his daughter, that will make three of us. Change is coming.
I am glowing with satisfaction in the knowledge of having righted a great wrong.
•”Midwit”? My savoring of Prof. Amy Wax's term ”midwit gynocrats” in the January 12th podcast got a couple of puzzled listeners emailing in to ask the meaning of ”midwit.” Edward Dutton, who I think may have coined the term, gives a sufficient explanation here on X.
Are we ruled by "Midwits"?
— Edward Dutton (@jollyheretic) January 14, 2024
I believe we are. I mean those of above-average intelligence but not exceptionally brilliant, wielding substantial influence in our society - causing myriad societal problems.🧠🌐 1/ pic.twitter.com/pZV7cwULLz
• Wagner, Anton, Derb. Back in 2006 a certain Nicholas Antongiavanni published a book about the clothes men wear: The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style.
It turns out that ”Nicholas Antongiavanni” is a pseudonym for the writer we now know as Michael Anton, regular writer for the Claremont Review of Books and the author (under a different pseudonym) of the powerful September 2016 editorial ”The Flight 93 Election” that may have helped Donald Trump get elected.
The Amazon page for The Suit of course includes readers' reviews. One of them, a five-star review, highly praises the book but then expresses dismay that the author is seriously unprogressive. The review closes with this.
I wish I hadn’t learned as much about the author of ”The Suit” as I have. I used to think it would be cool to meet him, share a bottle of an amazing Bordeaux, and shoot the breeze about clothes, wine, and French cooking. Now I’ve relegated him (not that he would care in the least) to my personal Basket of Semi-Adorables, Semi-Deplorables, along with the likes of Richard Wagner, the vicious anti-Semite whose great music can move me to tears, and John Derbyshire, the racist political writer whose book ”Prime Obsession” is perhaps the best popular math book of the last century. It’s a truth I’ve seen demonstrated more than once: deplorable people sometimes create beautiful things.
Er, thank you, Sir… I guess.
• A wider outlook. A sarcastic (but not unpleasantly so) reader congratulates me on having broadened my outlook from that of a math snob to the more generous embrace of STEM snobbery.
Yeah, yeah. Now just cast your eye down this list of college majors ranked by SAT scores.
