Showing posts with label sexiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexiness. Show all posts

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