Quote#Books & Reading
Looking over such famous old books as Montmort's 'Analyse des jeux de…
Quote byCarl Barus · 1856–1935
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "The Mathematical Theory of the Top" (April 8, 1898).
English (original)
Looking over such famous old books as Montmort's 'Analyse des jeux de hasard' or Moivre's 'Doctrine of Chances' one regrets that so much excellent mathematics should have been wasted on games most of which are wholly obsolete. Coriolus in his '[Théorie Mathématique des Effets du] Jeu de billard' (1835) fared better, for the game is still very much alive and its dynamical terrors unsubdued.
— Carl Barus
More from Carl Barus
Among recent contributions we may refer in particular to Professor A. G. Greenhill's noteworthy papers... when one remembers that these complex curves reach only especially simple cases of motion, one may get some notion of the difficulty …
Memory peters out like the infinite series of a ζ-function.
In even greater measure is this true of the top. The top has been everybody's toy and must, therefore, at one time or another have piqued everybody's curiosity. Lagrange, Poinsot, Jacobi, not to mention other great names, have in turn paid …
Out of 1,000 men who are called, one (probably the ratio is much smaller) is chosen to do glorious scientific work.
Gentlemen, I am one of the 999 about to be forgotten.
Mathematicians will do well to observe that