Sunday, October 14, 2007

I'm βringing Sεxy βack

Sam introduces himself on his blog as "Sexy Mathematician Sam". Sadly, however, if we exclude the laudable Hot Mathematician website and, of course, Sam's questionable characterisation of himself - it would appear that the web is not altogether kind to us when it comes to appreciating the raw, unbridled sexual power of the mathematics community1.

It is time to redress this imbalance. I propose, dear reader2, that we hereby compile a list of candidates in a quest to uncover the the sexiest mathematician of all time a-la Dave's classic and terribly popular 'what's your favourite cardinal?' poll3. You can nominate yourself if you like, and yes, Martin, you can nominate Victor.

I wish to propose the following two candidates.

Geralomo Cardano , of Cardano's Method fame - a method which has the dual distinctions of 1 Victor Scharashkin's actually expecting us to remember the fucking thing on a 4th year Galois theory exam4 and 2 not really being Cardano's anyway. Apart from his dashing good looks, debonair smile and raw animal magnetism he has the following to commend him as a hard-drinking, hard-living, devil-may-care hornbag:

  1. After wheedling the general solution to the cubic from his friend with the promise not to tell anyone else, he promptly published it.
  2. He was a professional gambler who published posthumously a book on, amongst other things, effective cheating methods.
  3. He was convivted of Heresy, with his own son contributing to the prosecution.
  4. Having predicted astrologically the date of his own death, he killed himself on said day.
If I had my druthers (I'm bringing back the word "druthers" too, incidentally) the young and hip would be wearing the visage of Cardano, not Che Guevara proudly on their chest5.
Kurt Gödel , the man himself. And when I say "the man", I mean this in the sense of "who's the man?" Kurt's the man. As I go through the following I challenge you, ladies, to tell me you wouldn't hit that.
  1. He looked like a relative of Count Dracula.
  2. He married a night-club dancer. Up high, Kurt.
  3. He proved results which ran counter to, not only the entire generation of which he was a part, but pretty much everyone who went before him.
  4. Not only did he proved the mutual exclusiveness of the completeness and consistency of formal arithmetic on upwards - he did so by inserting into formal arithmetic an analogue of the statement "this statement is unprovable" - leading one to the inescapable conclusion that people were uncomfortable about his work not due to point 3., but because no-body likes a smart-arse.
  5. When being naturalised as a U.S. citizen he lectured the judge on the U.S. constitution and explained to him a loop-hole he'd found while Albert Einstein sat in the background saying "It's allright,........he's with me".
  6. He was completely, irretrievably insane - dying of starvation presumably because he thought that ghosts lived in his fridge.
  7. Whenever asked the question "What are you rebelling against?", he'd always answer with an Arnold-Schwarzenegger like voice "Vat Haf You Got".
Over to you.......

1Clio Cresswell doesn't, doesn't count.

2And I probably really do mean "reader" - singular, here.

3I still go with aleph1 . There's something I can relate to in the least cardinal in a state of identity crisis.
4Bastard!!!!!
5 Having bought said shirt at some trendy expensive boutique and failed to appreciate the irony

11 comments:

martin said...

Victor Scharaschkin

Andrew said...

Ordinarily, I'd ask for justification - but in this case I'll let it slide.

Ben said...

Doing a quick image search on google for "school of mathematics staff", this is what I came up with for Andrew.

Women

Jill Dickinson and Claire Ellis

Men

Stephen Coombes and Charles Eaton

Andrew said...

Hornbags, all. Thanks Ben.

Ben said...

And all you sexy mathematicians now have a place to purchase all your clothing, from a "physics teacher-turned-fashion designer and founder" of Dangerous Mathematicians

Sam said...

Kim mucks around in my blogger account. Its why I have "sexy mathematician" at the top, also why I have flowers in my hair in my facebook profile. There's actually a few pictures floating around the web I'm not particularly proud of that are chiefly down to her. Its an Asian thing.

Geoff said...

Sam, does she have a picture of her wearing your pants?

Andrew said...

I hope so. It'd be nice to know there's a picture of someone wearing Sam's pants. Lord knows there's none of Sam.

Andrew said...

And who would have thought, incidentally, that people would have been less concerned with the great and noble work entailed in this my most important post than they were with Sam's pants?

Unknown said...

I thought Claire Ellis was pretty hot, actually. And O MY GOD Dangerous Mathematicians has a bridal section!!! I am SO going to buy my wedding dress from there. Just for the label.

Also, I'd like to be predictable and nominate Phil Isaac.

Ben said...

Instead of watching "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" I decided to read Andrew's friends blogs. Now (point 3) I understand Martin's comment.