Hermes found again and it's a double!
On Thinking Ahead
...from the novel "Artifact" by Greg Benford,
a physicist:
"There was a great mathematician named Hilbert, who
telegraphed Berlin saying he had proved the outstanding unsolved problem in
mathematics, a thing called Riemann's conjecture. It has to do with the roots of
a well known function.
He sends this telegram to Berlin, where he's going
to give a speech. Everybody gets excited. So Hilbert shows up and talks, and
says nothing about the problem.
Somebody comes up to him after the speech
and says, what about Riemann's conjecture, what's the solution?
Hilbert
says he hasn't got one. He was taking his first airplane trip to Berlin, and was
pretty nervous, so he sent the telegram in case he got killed."
Thanks to Kris Byboth, Andy Wagers, Deric Gray, Kirk Fuller,
and others for the links and information above. Feel free to send any
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Clear skies,
Dan Bruton
astro@sfasu.edu
