ProofWiki:Jokes/Mathematicians' Party
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The Mathematicians' Party
Once upon a time, all the mathematicians who had ever lived attended a great big party, in order to let their hair down and enjoy themselves for once.
Plenty of physicists attended, and quite a few chemists and biologists came too.
Our roving reporter was at the door, and these are some of the things he observed ...
- Archimedes was found floating naked in the bath. He later agreed that, on balance, he'd screwed up. He was an early leaver.
- Max Planck came, but stayed only a very short time.
- Johann Bernoulli and Jacob Bernoulli got ejected from the party for sliding down the brachistochrones.
- Kurt Gödel was denied entry because he couldn’t prove that he was invited.
- Werner Heisenberg may or may not have been there; it's impossible to be certain.
- Aristotle definitely was there, or wasn't. But not both.
- On the other hand, just because it was possible to prove that Bertus Brouwer did not attend, that does not mean he wasn't actually there.
- Nobody knew whether Erwin Schrödinger was there or not, until someone checked, at which point he collapsed.
- Hamilton went into every room once only, trying to find Euler, who passed through every door exactly once trying to find Hamilton.
- Fermat claimed he would attend, then died. He was going to send his acceptance on the actual invitation itself, but the margin was too narrow.
- Georg Cantor wasn't on the guest list (I can't count how many times that's happened).
- Blaise Pascal wagered he was better off attending than not.
- Maria Agnesi thought it was a costume party due to a mistranslation, and showed up dressed as a witch.
- Frank Ramsey spent much time socializing with a group of mutual friends or a group of mutual strangers.
- Paul Erdős shook hands with everyone who shook hands with someone who shook hands with him — including himself.
- Pavlov brought his dog, which immediately started chasing Schrödinger's cat.
- Felix Hausdorff was unfortunately unable to attend; he sent his topologies.
- Grigori Perelman was multiply invited, but absolutely refused to attend.
- Douglas Hofstadter managed to attend despite a horrible cold. He tried to make conversation but the only sounds he could make were "gurgle", "atishoo" and "bark".
- Évariste Galois attended, but couldn't handle a few shots.
- A whole crowd of unidentified metric spatialists gatecrashed, thinking it was an open ball.
- Vilfredo Pareto observed that $80\%$ of the food was being eaten by $20\%$ of the guests.
- Paul Cohen worked out, all by himself, that whether he continued to stay at the party was independent upon whether anyone else did.
- Oliver Heaviside wasn't in attendance until time $t = c$.
- Paolo Ruffini tried to make it, but he wasn't Abel.
- Nicolas Bourbaki spent so long arguing over exactly how the party was to be defined that it had ended before he got there.
- An alternative party was thrown by Bertrand Russell. He sent invitations to everyone who hadn't sent themselves an invitation to an alternative party.
- Alexander Grothendieck was considering an isomorphism between two party spaces when his friend suggested that they attend a party. "You mean an actual party?" he replied.
- "Here, take a chair at the table, drink some beer with us," said a mathematician. "Why would I take a line at the point and drink planes?" replied David Hilbert.
- "When will the party end?" someone asked the host. "No one can know," replied Alan Turing.
- Albert Einstein took some other partygoers on a joyride in his new space craft, which travelled at half the speed of light. But when they returned, the party was over.
- Willard Van Orman Quine was beside himself with rage at not being invited when he read that "Willard Van Orman Quine was beside himself with rage at not being invited".
- Brook Taylor kept going on and on about things until Joseph Fourier told him to be a bit more discrete.
Many, many other mathematicians and physicists were there. Please tell any stories about them that you know.