Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- The Mystery of the Four-leaf Clovers
- A Fugue
- Tombstone Inscriptions
- The Two Lights
- MMM
- Acquiring Some Personal Items for MMM
- Difficulty in Explaining Relativity Theory in a Few Words
- Difficulty in Obtaining a Cup of Hot Tea
- Hail to Thee, Blithe Spirit
- C. D.
- Cupid's Problem
- The Lighter Life of an Editor
- The Two Kellys
- Some Debts
- Hypnotic Powers
- Founding the Echols Mathematics Club
- Meeting Maurice Fréchet
- Mathematizing the New Mathematics Building
- Finding Some Lost Property Corners
- The Tennessee Valley Authority
- How I First Met Dr. Einstein
- Catching Vibes, and Kindred Matters
- A Pair of Unusual Walking Sticks
- A New Definition
- Dr. Einstein's First Public Address at Princeton
- Parting Advice
- Two Newspaper Items and a Phone Call
- Wherein the Author Is Beasted
- The Scholar's Creed
- The Perfect Game of Solitaire
- The Most Seductive Book Ever Written
- The Master Geometer
- Sandy
- The Perfect Parabola
- Three Coolidge Remarks
- Professor Coolidge during Examinations
- Professor Coolidge's Test
- Borrowing Lecture Techniques from Admired Professors
- My Teaching Assistant Appointment
- A Night in the Widener Memorial Library
- The Slit in the Wall
- Nathan Altshiller Court
- An Editorial Comment
- Intimations of the Future
- A Rival Field
- A Chinese Lesson
- The Bookbag
- Running a Mile in Twenty-one Seconds
- Winning the 1992 Pólya Award
- A Love Story
- Eves' Photo Album
- A Condensed Biography of Howard Eves
- An Abridged Bibliography of Howard Eves' Work
The Mystery of the Four-leaf Clovers
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- The Mystery of the Four-leaf Clovers
- A Fugue
- Tombstone Inscriptions
- The Two Lights
- MMM
- Acquiring Some Personal Items for MMM
- Difficulty in Explaining Relativity Theory in a Few Words
- Difficulty in Obtaining a Cup of Hot Tea
- Hail to Thee, Blithe Spirit
- C. D.
- Cupid's Problem
- The Lighter Life of an Editor
- The Two Kellys
- Some Debts
- Hypnotic Powers
- Founding the Echols Mathematics Club
- Meeting Maurice Fréchet
- Mathematizing the New Mathematics Building
- Finding Some Lost Property Corners
- The Tennessee Valley Authority
- How I First Met Dr. Einstein
- Catching Vibes, and Kindred Matters
- A Pair of Unusual Walking Sticks
- A New Definition
- Dr. Einstein's First Public Address at Princeton
- Parting Advice
- Two Newspaper Items and a Phone Call
- Wherein the Author Is Beasted
- The Scholar's Creed
- The Perfect Game of Solitaire
- The Most Seductive Book Ever Written
- The Master Geometer
- Sandy
- The Perfect Parabola
- Three Coolidge Remarks
- Professor Coolidge during Examinations
- Professor Coolidge's Test
- Borrowing Lecture Techniques from Admired Professors
- My Teaching Assistant Appointment
- A Night in the Widener Memorial Library
- The Slit in the Wall
- Nathan Altshiller Court
- An Editorial Comment
- Intimations of the Future
- A Rival Field
- A Chinese Lesson
- The Bookbag
- Running a Mile in Twenty-one Seconds
- Winning the 1992 Pólya Award
- A Love Story
- Eves' Photo Album
- A Condensed Biography of Howard Eves
- An Abridged Bibliography of Howard Eves' Work
Summary
It was in 1955 that the Hafner Publishing Company of New York City brought out G. W. Dunnington's scholarly Carl Friedrich Gauss, Titan of Science: A Study of His Life and Work. I was teaching at the University of Maine at the time and, as I was then in the process of building up a history of mathematics library, I ordered a copy of the book. I keenly looked forward to the book's arrival, and was delighted a couple of weeks later to find it on my office desk, amongst an assortment of other mail, delivered there for me while I was in class. Since I had a free period, I sat down and began listlessly paging through the volume. Imagine my astonishment when I got to the facing pages 100 and 101 to find there four neatly pressed four-leaf clovers. What a mysterious surprise! For some days I pondered on the mystery and told a number of my colleagues about it. Many wild and unlikely conjectures were offered, like: perhaps the book company does this with all their books, or perhaps only with the Dunnington volume, or maybe only for new customers, and so on. Finally my friend Professor Wootton decided to order a copy of the book for himself just to see if he too would receive some pressed four-leaf clovers. In time his copy arrived. It contained no four-leaf clovers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mathematical Reminiscences , pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Mathematical Association of AmericaPrint publication year: 2001