Comment Re:Yau (Score 1) 212
"C'est visible que..."
Perelman was probably simply following one of the grand traditions in mathematics, illustrated by the story about Laplace below:
Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, an enormous five volume tome on just about everything you ever wanted to know about celestial mechanics, was first translated into the English language by Nathaniel Bowditch. Though others did it before him, Laplace was notorious for leaving length demonstrations to the reader, usually preceded with "C'est visible que..." (It is obvious that...). Bowditch meticulously filled in all the gaps, but before long he grew to dread those words, for he knew that when he saw them, he was in for a lengthy bit of derivation before what Laplace claimed was obvious was, in fact, obvious.
I think I first came across this anecdote in E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, but don't recall for sure - I found it on the net here: http://math.bu.edu/people/jeffs/joke.html
Perelman was probably simply following one of the grand traditions in mathematics, illustrated by the story about Laplace below:
Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, an enormous five volume tome on just about everything you ever wanted to know about celestial mechanics, was first translated into the English language by Nathaniel Bowditch. Though others did it before him, Laplace was notorious for leaving length demonstrations to the reader, usually preceded with "C'est visible que..." (It is obvious that...). Bowditch meticulously filled in all the gaps, but before long he grew to dread those words, for he knew that when he saw them, he was in for a lengthy bit of derivation before what Laplace claimed was obvious was, in fact, obvious.
I think I first came across this anecdote in E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, but don't recall for sure - I found it on the net here: http://math.bu.edu/people/jeffs/joke.html
