2009/1/18 mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com>: > > > > On Jan 18, 2:36 am, "John Cremona" <john.crem...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi John, > >> > This obviously leads to the joke about the professor being asked what >> > his favorite programming language is and the answer being "PhD" :) >> >> I believe that is actually a *true* story, the prof in question being >> (Professor Sir Peter) Swinnerton-Dyer. He was asked what programming >> language he used, and he replied (in effect) "a very high-level >> language : PhD student". > > I am curious how far back this story goes and which n-th link in the > chain of people telling this story you are (in case it could be > reconstructed or estimated). I guess coming up with something like the > above has happened more than once and pre-Internet I am sure that > those people would not have heard of somebody else making such a > claim. To me this was just an "obvious" joke, but if it is based in > facts it makes it much more interesting.
I am pretty sure that I have heard S-D say this in person. But memory can be selective. I have certainly heard Richard Pinch quote it (he now works for the government but at one point was a postdoc for S-D), well before the days of the internet, though he would never let a detail like truth (or lack of) spoil a good story! John > >> Somehow this seems a very appropriate anecdote for Sage-devel... > > Given that Sage was largely started to do computational research > toward proving the BSD conjecture this is an excellent anecdote. > >> John > > Cheers, > > Michael > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
