Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!ge-dab!peora!petsd!cjh
From: cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: Academic legend (was Re: Answers...)
Summary: It could have happened
Message-ID: <1759@petsd.UUCP>
Date: 6 Feb 90 18:05:09 GMT
References: <643@shodha.dec.com> <19630@netnews.upenn.edu> <1280@oravax.UUCP> <10661@saturn.ADS.COM> <KERS.90Jan29091233@cdollin.hpl.hp.com> <1076@sys.uea.ac.uk> <1990Feb1.084329.23934@agate.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich)
Organization: Perkin-Elmer DSG, Tinton Falls, N.J.
Lines: 27

In article <1990Feb1.084329.23934@agate.berkeley.edu> gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) writes:
>In article <1076@sys.uea.ac.uk>, jrk@sys (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>
>>>Another Academic Legend?
>
>>I heard this story told at Oxford, where it was said to have happened at
>>Cambridge.  At Cambridge, do they tell it of Oxford?
>
>  This is definitely a Legend. I heard a version where the
>subject was ring theory. The thesis was about rings with certain
>conditions, about which many amazing theorems were proven by the
>PhD student in question. When asked for an example,it turned out
>that there weren't any.

I heard a version of it in the first person, as reminiscence by a
topologist.  He reviewed a paper which proved that if a topological
space X had property A then it also had property B.  In his review he
stated that if X had property A then it also had property not-B.

What were A and B? He never said.  I conjecture that they were mildly
esoteric stuff in point-set topology, and the fact that no space has
property A was not earth-shaking.

Regards,
Chris

(201)758-7288    106 Apple Street, Tinton Falls,N.J. 07724