5/29/11

VITAE MATHEMATICORUM

VITAE MATHEMATICORUM

now, some of them died for love.

the Head of the Academy of Sciences in Gallia was Gautsky. he gained fame for the discovery of the complex numbers. but some say he usurped results first established by deMovere who introduced the polar representation of complex numbers, an idea that led to harmonic analysis and group theory. anyway, it is certain that Gautsky introduced the concept of analyticity and was the first to rigorously resolve the convergence of infinite series of complex numbers. his work set the foundation for the development of classical analysis. but Gautsky, a learned analyst, and a great innovator in his youth, by the time he was fifty he was blind to newer developments, that bore the mark of genius on them.
in particular. in the School of the Academy, a young man was admitted at the age of sixteen. his name was Kahlua. he wrote three papers on what we now call group theory, a field that at that time and for many decades to come, was literally nonexistent. Kahlua handed his three papers to Gautsky who read them perfunctorily, did not understand them and scolded Kahlua for wasting his time. Kahlua, at the age of eighteen got involved in an affair with a prostitu- te and was challenged to a duel by a man much more learned than he the martial arts. knowing that he was about to die, he spent his last night writing a semi- nal paper on the field he had discovered and next morning he handed it to Gautsky, went to the field of honor and got killed.
Gautsky would have forgotten all about the paper, had he not been pestered by his rival deMovere for nineteen years. even though in the beginning he staunchly refused to present the paper to the Academy, eventually deMovere embarassed him to the point that he had no other choice. the paper was half heartedly prese- nted to the members of the Academy, who understood nothing, an the matter was forgotten for fifty five years. but the important fact was that it was publi- shed in the Archivesof the Academy.
after the prescribed fiftyfive years elapsed, a middle aged mathematician from Nordweg, named Babel, who at the time was on a sabbatical trip to Parigio, happened to come across the volume of the Archives that contained Kahlua's paper and read it. he immeditaely picked the thread up and decided to pursue the matter and develop his own ideas.
Babel was no mathematical celebrity. he was the type of mathematician that would roam from Court to Court, tutoring the children of the local nobles and performing mathematical tricks for the amusement of the lords and their concu- bines. as soon as he saw Kahlua's work he was so taken, that he gave up every- thing to stay in Parigio , the only place where he could have access to Kahlua' s work. he spent six years there, reading about groups and discoursing with the decrepit deMovere, who at the age of one hundred and three was the eldest mathematician ever. Babel's economics were very poor though and he had to live in cold, damp attics. his health was ruined. eventually he decided to give up and started pursuing a position in some nobleman's court. however, he had to wait another three years for the position to materialize, during which time, his health was rapidly declining. he was however working on groups all the time, and, due to his connection to deMovere, whose name was still extre- mely respected, his work was published. so there is a corpus of sixty seven papers on groups by Babel, which formed the basis for the work of modern researchers. however, Babel's work, just like Kahlua's was decades ahead of its time and his contemporaries pid no attention to him. this only increased the difficulty of securing the desired position. in the last year of his stay in Parigio, Babel, with tuberculosis eating his lungs away, had come to the point of cursing Kahlua and his work. finally, the Viscount of Narimandia offered him a steady, well paid position in his court, in December of ...., on the condi- tion he should report within three days. the distance between Parigio and Narimandia is one hundred and twenty one parasanghi. Babel, bedridden with a heavy cold, wasted no time: he jumped on a mule and set off, riding night and day . on his way he was caught in a snow storm, developed pneumonia and died within one week after his punctual arrival to the Viscount's Court.
in many of his communications with deMovere, Babel had tried to establish what deMovere's motive was in pushing Gautsky to disclose Kahlua's paper. deMovere did not understand the papers any better than Gautsky or any of their colleagues. with a devilish grin crossing his shrunk face, deMovere would always give the same reply: he wanted to see the puzzled expression on the faces of the "old assholes", as he described his colleagues. but this was hardly a credible explanation. the Academy of the Sciences of Gallia was hardly the place where a public humiliation of these wise gentlemen would be of any importa- nce. after all, in the very same halls the famous laGirango, Creator of the Celestial Mechanics , stopped in the middle of one of his paper deliveries saying: "no, i have to think more on this topic".
a better explanation would have to take into account the geopolitics of the time. the Kingdom of Gallia was neighbouring in the North to a loose federation of Totonian states, each of them ruled by a petty monarch. their power was small because of the fragmenation and lack of a central authority. but the only way to unite these states, all consisting of racially related groupuscles, was by first bringing about a cultural unifcation, not on the levelof the peoples, but among the intellectuals. in general, the Totonian intelectualls were drawn to Gallia and the glamorous life of Parigio, which was the intellectual center of the world ( at the time ). but, some enlightened Totonian monarchs decided to take action and started granting generous sums for the development of mathema- tical centers. the two great Totonian mathematicians, Gosso and Oilari, were men of these restless times, and in a short period managed to produce mathematical work of incredible beauty, importance and attractiveness. the young Totonians with a bend for mathematics would flock to their centers, Gosso's in Kenixverge and Oilari's in Goodin. the result was that the intellectual, and consequently political prestige of Gallia was tarnished.
deMovere was a shrewd politician, in the confidence of the King of Gallia, to whom he often offered advice. so he realized the need for a rejuvenation of the Gallian mathematics . however there were few good mathematicians in Gallia at the time. obviously, the young Kahlua was one of them, as his performance in every branch of conventional mathematics testified. however, conventional mathematics was not what Gallia needed, as deMovere reasoned. Gallia needed modern mathematics and modern mathematicians. hopefully Kahlua was one of them. the morning of Kahlua's demise, a group of the King's personal guards wer racing to save him from the sword of his opponent. the leader of the group, a certain Darta Nano, from the province of Gascone, felled the man who had killed Kahlua. but obviously he was too late: Kahlua's young and tender body was lying on the ground, his heart pierced and his blood dripping on the fresh spring grass.
this was a great loss to Gallia, but if at least Kahlua's papers could be salvaged? deMovere tried to leverage Gautsky into this, nut he had to work hard for nineteen years. that deMovere with all of the State and the Royal
establishment behind him could not force Gautsky was evidence of the indepen- dence of the Gallian Universities. in fact the Gallian Universities could start revolutions: vid. 1791, 1830, 1848 and 1968.
the professors, who could commandeer the services of a tremendously dedicated student body, wielded political power was to be respected. in fact, during the nineteen years that Gautsky refused to present Kahlua's paper, he took active part in the two revolutions of 1830 and 1848, that almosst destroyed the regime. finally, the accusation that Gautsky, himself of Totonian origin, was actively sabotaging the Gallian intellectual establishment, became believable enough to the newer generation of revolutionaries in the Academy, who were anyway seeking for a scapegoat to accuse for the failure of the 1848 revolt. the old Gautsky was the perfect scapegoat, and he was forced to deliver Kahlu- a's paper to refute the accusations. in this respect, his attempt failed: he was finally accused openly, condemned and excommunicated in 1851.
the role of the Gallian intellectuals is very interesting as compared to that of their Angolesian counterparts across the Canale Straits. the major universities there, Bosporus and Cambiria, and the counterpart of the Academy of Gallia, the Royal Society, were staunchly conservative in their political views. on the other hand they were libertine in their social mores. this is even more striking if we consider the fact that Angolesia is a morally extreme- ly conservative country. in particular, sodomy is totally unacceptable. yet, in Bosporus and Cambiria, where the men to women ratio was well above fifteen to one, for the old lechers the only way out was sodomy, a habit which most of the young students had already developed in the public school system from which they originated.
an example of two distinguished homosexuals in Cambiria, were Harry and Litelwo Harry was by thiry years the senior of Litelwo. when Litelwo came to Cambiria, he was dazzled by Harry, the mathematical wizard. the two of them collaborated closely in every single paper they wrote for the next thirteen years, and Litelwo proved to be Harry's equal as a mathematician. in fact, Harry would o- penly declare that the only reason he quit his predatory ( on young male undergraduates ) sexual habits and settled down for a steady liaison with Litelwo, was that Litelwo was his intellectual equal. however, their affair was also characterized by wild sex and plenty of common athletic activities, as they both were outstanding athletes. it was a great blow for both of them, when, at the age of sixty three, Harry, the sturdy old man who woke up at six o' clock every morning to bathe in the cold waters of the Cam river, fell down from a steep rock cliff while mountain hiking in the Pennines. the site of the event being thirty parasangi from the closest village, Litelwo took Harry on his back and ran all the way back. Harry was saved but paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life, for which he was bitterly resentful of Litelwo 's saving him. the resulting tension made Litelwo break the relationship up and go away and Harry spent the next seven years totally alone, confined in a wheelchair. his first two attempts at suicide by withholding his breath failed, but finally, at age seventy he succeeded to end his life by a long hunger strike. Litelwo on the other hand lived to be ninety three, publishing until the day of his death, and, more remarkably, never mentioning Harry's name again. engaging in this tactique, entailed his never referring to their older joint papers in his later research.
much as Harry's hunger strike was admired in Cambiria, nobody would have thought of using such means to promote political ends, much less to do as the Gallian mathematicians did: go down in the streets with red flags and kill for the freedom of the masses. in fact, an interesting event is worth reciting: fifty years before Harry's instatement as a professor in Cambiria, the famed Nootoni had died. now Nootoni was a truly remarkable man. he was one of the two inventors of the Calculus, the other one being the aggressive Totonian Liponiz. Liponiz tried to keep all the credit for himself, again with the explicit purpose of glorifying Totonian mathematics ( much like Goss and Oilari ). unfortuantely for Nootoni, at the time, the Angolesian government was allied to the Totonian Federation and Her Majesty's Government ordered their subject to not dispute with Liponiz. apparently, Her Majesty's Government did not prize mathematics as much as the necessity of keeping Gallia busy worrying about the Totonians, so as to keep off Angolesis'a back, and leave the Angolesians with a free hand in their struggle against the Sapanardi, overthe transatlantic dominions. well, Nootoni knew his duty and did not complain. he acquiesced and gave up his claims for the calculus, even though he was a much better mathematician than Liponiz, a great physicist and the most intelligent man on erath at the time ( but there was a woman, a sorceress and prostitute that was more intelligent than Nootoni ). so Nootoni did not complain, but he felt so bitter about the whole affair that he gave up Mathematics and Science and took up Theology. for the next thirty years he wrote nothing on mathematics , but instead thought abouth the human soul. however, his chair of mathematics in Cambbiria was nevr taken away from him, because he was so widely worshipped by his colleagues. this chair was endowed by the income of the transatlantic dominions, exactly the same ones that the Sapanardi were trying to take away. the dominions were saved by the great buccaneer Franciscus Dracus, a paramour of the Angolesian Queen Lesbita.this Dracus was a brilliant man, also going under the names Billy Sakespiro and Franco Bacchone. he wrote philosophical works under the first name and theatrical under the second. but his greatest contribution in the glory of Angolesia was the saving of the Transatlantic Dominions which were soon to become an independent state under the name Oosha. so Nootoni's chair was funded by Dracus' exploits and after Nootoni's death, a successor should be appointed. the dean of Cambiria traveled to Lodino, where the best fortune tellers resided, fasted for a week and walked barefoot to the Museo Biritisco, where the witches lair was located. they advised him to take the first man he would meet after he exited the room of the oracles. the place was not only the lair of the witches, but also the best, biggest and most com- prehensive library in the world. so lots of scholars were spending their days there researching abstruse topics. as the dean of Cambiria walked out, he bumped into a young scholar with long wavy hair, like the mane of a lion, and a huge Biblical beard. the dean implored him to join Cambiria as the successor of Nootoni, but the youth replied that he was busy creating a new religion and did not want to divide his efforts. the young man was Karlo Maraxi.
Nootoni's chair remained open, and that was the last chance of Cambiria to deal with political animals for ninety years. only forty years after Harry's death, a man who combined political consciousness and intellectual promiscuity showed up in Cambiria. this man was Beritan Rossler. he started his career by attempting to write a treatise that explained all of life, religion and philo- sophy in mathematical terms. the book Principia Mathematica appeared after twenty three years of labor and enjoyed an enormous popularity for a short time, as the Cambiria scholars thought it answered All The Questions. but two years later another Cambiria professor, a foreigner under the name Vico Vitken prepa- red HIS Book, called Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, in which he exposed a fundamental logical fallacy in the fundamental assumptions that Roosler used in his treatment of the universe. Also, their differences were stri- king: Rossler's book took twenty three years to write; Vitken wrote his over- night, during an LSD trip. Rossler's book was an unwieldy mass of three thou- sand plus pages; Vitken's was a mere sixty pages. and the answers were better, clearer, more concise. in fact, the book Tractaus is the best book ever written as Rossler himself humbly admitted and as time has borne out. so Rossler, a pure man, offered to translate Vitken's book and wrote a preface to it. Vitken, a tactful, shy but demnding intellectual answered in a short , terse letter, the essence of which was that Rossler , as his preface made clear, did not understand a word of the book, just like the rest of the world. then, Vitken underwent a psychical experience that made him renounce his books and not write ( not only not publish, but not even write ) a line for the rest of his life. however he continued teaching in Cambiria and was generally acknowledged as the leading authority in metaphysical questions. only the last day of his life, when he knew he was dying, did he write again, and produced a set of hastily written notes that display his great knowledge.
in the meantime, Rossler could not withstand the triple blow of his book's demi se, his rejection by Vitken and Vitken's spiritual rebirth. si Rossler, a con- servative nobleman, took to politics, turned pacifist and radical and attempted dto save the common man. during the first big war he refused to fight, he was thrown in jail and his position in Cambiria was greatly weakened.
in the meantime, two important events were taking place. the first was the rise of Totonian mathematics to the status of being the best mathematical theo- ry in the world. this gave great pride to the Totonians, however they had to deal with an unpleasant fact: the majority of distinguished mathematicians in the Totonian regions ( now contained in the recently created Giriman state ) were not Totonians. instead they belonged to a culturally, racially and econo- mically distinct group, the Jahudi , who were intensely hated by the Totonians. the influence of the Jahudi in the edifice of Totonian mathematics can be seen by the following fact: as we all know the base of all mathematics is set theory and the base of set theory is the concept of cardinality. the standard letter in mathematics for the first infinite cardinality is aleph, a jahudi letter introduced by the Totonian-Jahudi mathematician Kinator.
this was the first event, that proved so unbearable to the Totonians that they initiated terrible pogroms against the Jahudi, imprisoning them in concentration camps and putting them to death by poison gasses or using them as human guinea pigs. it is estimated that about six million Jahudi,that is, seventy percent of their total population were killed this way. however, the re- maining thrirty percent fled to other countries and mainly to Oosha, which was the new and rising world economic power. in the meantime Giriman, the greatest military power at the time, declared war on the world, with two basic objecti- ves: first to destroy the Jahudi and restore the integrity of Totonian mathema- tics and second to destroy the state Ruess, which was the seat of the only re- gime on erath governed according to Maraxi's principles. ( remember that Maraxi was the son of a converted Jahudi family. ) this was the second event.
at the time of this war, the second big war, there were two great minds in the world. the first was a Jahudi physicist who created a theory according to which matter could be turned to energy at a very favourable ratio. the result was that very much energy was available for the creation of weapons that could cause unimaginable destruction. The silver haired old man wept with joy as he visualized all the destruction he could heap upon the hated Totonians, that had well near destroyed his race. As he was scribbling the final equations that sealed the validity of his theory irrevocably, he had a vision: he saw in front of him a luminous mushroom that was slowly swelling with the sigh of myriad souls escaping the breasts that held them.
the other great mind, was a mathematician, the greatest of them all. he could speak ten languages. he got his Ph.D. at the age of eighteen. he worked in every existing field of mathematics of his time and created on his own some new. he worked on quantum mechanics, operator theory, calculus of variations, differential equations, topology, logic, group theory. he created computer science, automata theory, game theory. this man, an agnostic Jahudi, was married to two women, had several mistresses, gambled, drank, raced cars. his name, by the way, is N.
so N. created computer science and the computers. this in turn made it possible that mind boggling computations were performed, that would dull the powers of ten of the greatest mathematicians. but the sacred beast, the machine that N. conceived, designed and implemented, performed these calculations in a fraction of a second; and then destroyed its own circuitry, so as not to witness the de- struction that these computations would cause. But a very powerful weapon was designed, and its use against the Totonians was carefully planned. How great was the disappointment of the power wielding ma- thematicians, soldiers and orators when the Tootonians lost the war before they could tatste the destructive power of three great brains concentrated in a pure theory!
N. however advocated the use of theweapon anyway, against any possible enemy. the most likely target seemed to be the Ruess hegemony, the ally in the war against the Tootonians, but also the powerful perpetrator of the Maraxi theory. N. went at work with incredible energy, inventing novel forms of aggressive mathematics, that astounded everybody.
however, N. died of bone cancer, caused by his exposure and heavy involvement with the very powerful weapon he helped create. Some people believe that the concentrated psychic power of the souls of the dead people, people crushed during preliminary tests of the murderous agent, this concentrated power, was directed at the man N. and seeped into the marrow of his bones, creating inflamations and tumors that finally led to his death.

No comments: