Log24

For the title, see Icon Parking in a search for 54th  in this journal.

For related iconic remarks, click on either image below.

  .

This post was suggested by the Dec. 30, 2016, date of the
death in Nuremberg of mathematician Wolf Barth.  The first
image above is from a mathematics-related work by
John von Neumann discussed here on that date.

See also Wolf Barth in this journal for posts that largely
concern not the above Barth, but an artist of the same name.
For posts on the mathematician only, see Barth + Kummer.

"When shall we three meet again?"

Left to right— John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Stanislaw Ulam

The source of the above book's title, "Analogies between Analogies,"
was misattributed in a weblog post linked to here on March 4th, 2012.
It occurs in a quote due not to Stanislaw Ulam but to Stefan Banach—

Ulam was Jewish. Banach was not.

From a webpage on Banach—

"On 3 April 1892, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic
 Parish of St. Nicholas in Krakow."

See also…

1. a post of Sunday, April 2, 2006,
2. yesterday's Pennsylvania lottery, and
3. post 585 in this journal. 

(At Los Alamos, Ulam developed the Monte Carlo method.)

This journal’s Christmas Day entry, Brightness at Noon, was in response to the Orwellian headline “Arthur Koestler, Man of Darkness,” at the top of the online New York Times front page on Christmas morning.

The entry offered, as an example of brightness, some thoughts of Leibniz on his discovery of binary arithmetic.

Related material:

From Mikhail Krawtchouk: Short Biography—

Anyone knowing even a little Soviet history of the thirties can conclude that Krawtchouk could not avoid the Great Terror. During the Orwellian “hours of hatred” in 1937 he was denounced as a “Polish spy,” “bourgeois nationalist,” etc. In 1938, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years of confinement and 5 years of exile.

Academician Krawtchouk, the author of results which became part of the world’s mathematical knowledge, outstanding lecturer, member of the French, German, and other mathematical societies, died on March 9, 1942, in Kolyma branch of the GULAG (North-Eastern Siberia) more than 6 months short of his 50th birthday.

Incidentally, happy birthday
to John von Neumann.

was the title of a symposium on quantum theory at Princeton last week dedicated to the late John von Neumann. The title was left undefined. In honor of von Neumann, here is some material that may help those searching for the title’s meaning:

Herman Goldstine (left), shown in 1952
at the Institute for Advanced Study
with J. Robert Oppenheimer (center)
and John von Neumann (right).

Click on the picture above
for an obituary in today's New York Times 
of Goldstine, who died on June 16, 2004.

Click on the picture below 
for an event appropriate to
the date of Goldstine's death.

Toy Soldiers

From a website biography of John von Neumann:

It is noteworthy that he was uninhibited by ethical considerations in weaponry. I was surprised, therefore, when he died a Roman Catholic. To be sure, his first wife had been Catholic. I presume that he was a nominal one in those early days of his marriage. In his last illness, he asked for a clergyman, but he surprised them by insisting upon a Roman Catholic priest. A Benedictine was succeeded by a Jesuit for instruction. The attending Air Force chaplain told me that Johnny could quote the Penitential Psalms in Latin. 

— “Von Neumann, Jewish Catholic,” by Raymond J. Seeger, in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 40 (December 1988): 234-236.   

The sixth of the Seven Penitential Psalms is Psalm 129, “De Profundis.”

From the film “The Sixth Sense“:

CUT TO:

INT. CHURCH – DAY

Only a few people sit and pray in the sea of oak pews. Malcolm scans the majestic room and finds what he’s looking for in the last row of the church. He moves down the center aisle towards the back.

Malcolm finds Cole playing in his pew with a set of green and beige plastic soldiers. Cole makes the soldiers talk to each other.

….

MALCOLM

What was that you were saying before with your soldiers?
Day pro fun.

COLE

…De profundis clamo ad te domine.

Malcolm stares surprised.

COLE

It’s called Latin. It’s a language.

Malcolm nods at the information.

MALCOLM

All your soldiers speak Latin?

COLE

No, just one.

From Plato’s Cave
(Von Neumann’s Song, Part III)

In this entry we return to the classic words of the Hollywood Argyles as they sing a paean of praise to St. John von Neumann:

He’s the king of the jungle jive.
Look at that caveman go!

This meditation is prompted by a description of caveman life by the functional analysis working group at the University of Tübingen:

Picture of von Neumann courtesy of
Princeton University Library