This forum certainly has some unusual chemistry! :wink:

For any non-mathematicians interested in the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer,
I would recommend the book "Elliptic Tales" by Avner Ash and Robert Gross:
[URL]https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9665.html[/URL]

For mathematicians, Raymond van Bommel's recent PhD thesis may be of interest:
[URL]https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/66673[/URL]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;505304]Anyone else notice that they were all 76? Bad week for folks of that age.[/QUOTE]Life expectancy / MTBF of the American male was less than that for someone born in 1942. Such considerations are becoming less academic by the year for many of us GIMPsters. [URL]http://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html[/URL]


Can anyone place/attribute this quote? "little of all we value here, sees the dawn of its hundredth year" dimly remembered from decades ago. It seems to fit the picture, re human life spans, housing, transportation, pets, superpower status of nations, businesses, economic booms, etc.

[QUOTE=kriesel;505419]Can anyone place/attribute this quote? "little of all we value here, sees the dawn of its hundredth year" dimly remembered from decades ago.[/QUOTE]
The couplet

[quote]Little of all we value here
Wakes on the dawn of its hundredth year
Without both looking and feeling queer;
In fact there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.[/quote] appears in

[url=http://holyjoe.org/poetry/holmes1.htm]The Deacon’s Masterpiece or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay": A Logical Story by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)[/url]

The couplet is followed by [quote](This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You’re welcome. — No extra charge.)[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;505427]
[QUOTE]
In fact there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]

Ah, but truth is coyer than we once thought. It follows trends and goes in and out of style.

[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You’re welcome. — No extra charge.)
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]

"I offer free advice... and it's worth every penny."

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;505427]The couplet

appears in

[URL="http://holyjoe.org/poetry/holmes1.htm"]The Deacon’s Masterpiece or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay": A Logical Story by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)[/URL]

The couplet is followed by[/QUOTE]


That's it! Thanks!
A well designed structure is uniformly weak.

That deacon was an engineer par excellence.

[URL="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46850763"]Michael Atiyah[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;505705][URL="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46850763"]Michael Atiyah[/URL][/QUOTE]8-(

[QUOTE=Nick;505705][URL="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46850763"]Michael Atiyah[/URL][/QUOTE]

I saw Michael Atiyah lecture some time around 1980 in Altgeld Hall at the University of Illinois. (I don't think he had been knighted yet, but he might have been on the list.) He was sharp as all getout then.

Someone there (I forget who) told an anecdote from when he had last been in England, about having seen an old teacher from pre-college days. The teacher mentioned one student he had thought of as extraordinarily bright, and asked what had become of him. The man told him the former student had done all right, and had a good position at such-and-such a school. The old teacher was pleased, and then said, "I had this other student, not as bright, but still quite good. Do you know what has become of Michael Atiyah?" Everyone howled with glee...

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing"]Carol Channing[/URL] at 97. I remember her from long ago as incredibly funny.
EDIT:
[QUOTE]1970, Channing was the first celebrity to perform at a Super Bowl halftime.[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-69"][62][/URL]
In 1973, it came to light during the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Watergate_Committee"]Watergate hearings[/URL] that Channing was on a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_list_of_Nixon%27s_political_opponents"]master list of Nixon's political opponents[/URL], informally known as Nixon's "enemies list". [B]She has subsequently said that her appearance on this list was the highest honor in her career.[/B][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-70"][63][/URL]
1981, Channing was inducted into the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Theatre_Hall_of_Fame"]American Theatre Hall of Fame[/URL].[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-71"][64][/URL]
1984, [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_High_School_%28San_Francisco%29"]Lowell High School[/URL] renamed its auditorium "The Carol Channing Theatre" in her honor.[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-Greenville-16"][15][/URL]
1988, The city of [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco,_California"]San Francisco, California[/URL], proclaimed February 14, 1988, to be "Carol Channing Day."[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-72"][65][/URL]
1995, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Award"]Tony Award[/URL].[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-73"][66][/URL]
2004, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts by [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University,_Stanislaus"]California State University, Stanislaus[/URL].[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-74"][67][/URL]
2004, she received the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Hammerstein_II"]Oscar Hammerstein[/URL] Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-OSCARHAMMERSTEINAWARD-75"][68][/URL]
2010, a Golden Palm Star on the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Springs,_California"]Palm Springs, California[/URL], [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Springs_Walk_of_Stars"]Walk of Stars[/URL] was dedicated to her.[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing#cite_note-76"][69][/URL]
In December 2010, Channing was honored at [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Cares/Equity_Fights_AIDS"]Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS[/URL] Gypsy of the Year competition.[/QUOTE]

Slava Linkin 1937-2019
 

[URL="http://www.planetary.org/about/images/slava-linkin.html"]http://www.planetary.org/about/images/slava-linkin.html[/URL]

Slava Linkin, one of the leading planetary scientists in the Soviet Union and later Russia, passed away on 16 January 2019. Viachelslav Mikhailovich Linkin was an enormously important participant in Planetary Society history. He was deeply involved with The Planetary Society from 1984, when the Soviet Union flew their two Venus-Halley (VEGA) spacecraft past Comet Halley, to 2005, when we worked together to fly the first solar sail spacecraft, Cosmos 1. In between, he created international cooperation on Society projects. He played crucial roles in Mars balloon and Mars rover testing, the inclusion of Visions of Mars on the Mars ‘96 project, development of the Mars Microphone, and on the Cosmos 1 solar sail.

The Planetary Society Link [URL="http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2019/slava-linkin-obituary.html"][U]here[/U][/URL]

MICHEL LEGRAND
 

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy5jsvF7H3Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy5jsvF7H3E"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy5jsvF7H3Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy5jsvF7H3E[/URL]

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHezowVjDX4"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHezowVjDX4[/URL]

[SIZE="5"][COLOR="Purple"][CENTER]
Farewell Michel Legrand[/CENTER][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[COLOR="Lime"][SIZE="4"][CENTER][URL="http://michellegrandofficial.com/"]http://michellegrandofficial.com/[/URL][/CENTER][/SIZE][/COLOR]
[B]
French composer, jazz musician and conductor who wrote the scores for more than 250 films including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Yentl[/B]
John Fordham

Sun 27 Jan 2019 11.16 EST


The music of the composer, singer, arranger, conductor, jazz musician and producer Michel Legrand went on glowing long after many of the 250-odd films he had written soundtracks for had fallen by the wayside.

Legrand, who has died aged 86, made deadpan reference to that phenomenon when he played at Ronnie Scott’s club in London in 2011 – announcing that it was his ambition to meet “one of the 19 people who ever saw The Happy Ending”, the 1969 Hollywood film for which he wrote his classic love song What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?

But if some of the film vehicles for Legrand’s artistry were outlasted by his music, several became famous, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), with Noel Harrison singing The Windmills of Your Mind, which won Legrand’s first Oscar, for best film theme song, in 1969. Another Oscar followed for The Summer of ’42 two years later – this time for best film music. Its theme, The Summer Knows, was performed by Barbra Streisand, whose 1983 film, Yentl, won him his third Oscar, for the theme tune.


Legrand’s songwriting skills flowered in the early 1950s through intimate acquaintance with the modern chanson movement in Paris, at first as a gifted piano accompanist. After the second world war, the US was nostalgic for French culture, and when Columbia Records commissioned an English-language album of chanson classics, the young Legrand was hired to steer it – and found himself with an 8m-selling hit.

By his mid-20s, Legrand was able to call the shots as a composer and arranger on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1958, he even had more than sufficient clout to hire Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans – three of the hippest and most acclaimed young jazz musicians of the decade – to play sidemen’s roles on his Legrand Jazz session.

Michel was born in the Paris suburb of Bécon-les-Bruyères into a family with strong musical connections. His father, Raymond Legrand, was a composer, conductor and former pupil of Gabriel Fauré, and in his later years would go on to collaborate with Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. His maternal uncle on his mother Marcelle’s side was the dance-band saxophonist and bandleader Jacques Hélian.



But Raymond left home when Michel was three, and his mother Marcelle (nee Ter-Mikaëlian), struggled to provide for the boy and his older sister, Christiane. He found a consoling friend in the flat’s battered piano and it quickly emerged that he had a gift. Christiane also played the instrument, and she was similarly destined for a successful career in music, as a jazz singer.

Michel became obsessed with the music and life of Franz Schubert, and – with Nadia Boulanger among his teachers – won a raft of prizes on a variety of instruments at the Paris Conservatoire, which he began attending as a 10-year-old in 1942. But a 1947 Paris concert by the bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his big band thrilled him with the sound of jazz.

By the time he left the conservatoire in 1949 he was a budding jazz pianist with a profound knowledge of musical theory and a working knowledge of many instruments. His resourcefulness quickly found him work with chanson stars including Juliette Gréco and Zizi Jeanmaire, and in 1954 the international popularity of chanson brought his international breakthrough.