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From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: G. Spencer Brown -- Meet Arnold Arnold (or, Bring Back Tom Lehrer)
Message-ID: <516@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Sep-84 21:19:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.516
Posted: Sat Sep  8 21:19:29 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Sep-84 19:27:35 EDT
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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#  "and Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski was his name..." -- Tom Lehrer

On G. Spencer Brown:

     Yet another mathematical fraud ala Arnold squared.  Mr. Brown lost
respect after a bogus proof of the Four Color Conjecture.  The notation
in his Laws of Form tract doesn't explain much, and, as a variant of Boolean
algebra, is about as powerful.

On Tom Lehrer:

     I (and others) wish master parodist Lehrer would come out of hiding
at U. C. Santa Cruz (where he is a mathematician in residence) and lampoon
these perennial bozos.  He'd have so much fun.  Last ditty I've seen exude
from his pen was a fin-de-siecle-style tone poem entitiled "For Every Epsilon
there is a Delta" published in the American Mathematical Monthly about
a decade ago.

	-- James A. Woods  {hplabs,hao,philabs}!ames!jaw  (jaw@riacs.ARPA)

P.S.
     Not every discredited mathematician runs away tail-between-legs.
C.f. the very interesting story of the Bieberbach conjecture (a comeback
for 52 year old Louis de Branges), now appearing in the 7 Sept. Science.