- Ralph P. Boas, Jr
Ralph Philip Boas, Jr (
August 8 ,1912 -July 25 ,1992 ) was a mathematician, teacher, and journal editor. He wroteover 200 papers, mainly in the fields of real andcomplex analysis .He was born in
Walla Walla, Washington and got his A.B. degree and Ph.D. atHarvard University (Ph.D., 1937; advisor,David Widder ). [MathGenealogy|id=6870] In 1950 he became Professor of Mathematics atNorthwestern University , where he stayed until his retirement in 1980. He continued mathematical work after retiring, for instance as co-editor (withGeorge Leitmann ) of theJournal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications from 1985 to 1991.Big Game Hunting
Boas,
Frank Smithies and colleagues were behind the 1938 paper "A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting" published in theAmerican Mathematical Monthly under the pseudonym H. Pétard. Thepaper offers short spoofs of theories frommathematics andphysics applied to the capture oflion s in theSahara desert . For example,parodying theBolzano-Weierstrass theorem ,* The Bolzano-Weierstrass Method. Bisect the desert by a line running N-S. The lion is either in the E portion or in the W portion; let us suppose him to be in the W portion. Bisect this portion by a line running E-W. The lion is either in the N portion or in the S portion; let us suppose him to be in the N portion. We continue this process indefinitely, constructing a sufficiently strong fence about the chosen portion at each step. The diameter of the chosen portions approaches zero, so that the lion is ultimately surrounded by a fence of arbitrarily small perimeter.
The paper became a classic of mathematical humor and spawned various follow-ons over the years with theories or methods from other scientific areas adapted to hunting lions.
The paper and later work is published in "Lion Hunting and Other Mathematical Pursuits : A Collection of Mathematics, Verse, and Stories by the Late Ralph P. Boas, Jr", ISBN 0-88385-323-X. Various online collections of the lion hunting methods exist too.
Pondiczery
E. S. Pondiczery was another pseudonym used by Boas (maybe with collaborators), this time for a serious paper on
topology , "Power problems in abstract spaces",Duke Mathematical Journal , 11 (1944), 835-837. This paper and the name became part of theHewitt-Marczewski-Pondiczery theorem .The name, revealed in "Lion Hunting and Other Mathematical Pursuits" cited above, came from
Pondicherry (a place inIndia disputed by the Dutch, English and French) and a slavic twist. The initials "E.S." were a plan to write a spoof onextra-sensory perception (ESP).Other
Boas collaborated with
Paul Erdős on a paper ("The set on which an entire function is small",American Journal of Mathematics , 70, 400-402), giving him anErdős number of 1.His best-known books are the lion-hunting book previously mentioned and the monograph "A Primer of Real Functions". The current edition of the primer has been revised and edited by his son, mathematician
Harold P. Boas .The best-known of his 13 doctoral students is
Philip J. Davis , who is also his only advisee who did not graduate from Northwestern. Boas advised Davis, who was atHarvard University , while Boas was visiting atBrown University .References
* "A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting",
American Mathematical Monthly , Aug-Sep 1938, page 446.* "In Memoriam Ralph P. Boas, Jr",
George Gasper ,Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications , 173 (1993), pages 1-2. [http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~george/preprints/ggBoasMem/]* "Pondiczery was Ralph Boas - A Historical Vignette",
Melvin Henriksen . [http://at.yorku.ca/t/o/p/c/40.htm]Further reading
* "Some Modern Mathematical Methods in the Theory of Lion Hunting", O. Morphy,
American Mathematical Monthly , volume 75 (1968), pages 185-187.
* " [http://specgram.com/LP/21.mathiesen.hunting.html Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting] ", R. Mathiesen, Lingua Pranca, 1978.
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