From the incomparable Gwern:
Catching Lions With Mathematics
In Princeton I usually had dinner with a group of (mostly) mathematicians. One of the things we talked about was mathematical methods for catching lions. There were many jokes in this vein circulating at Princeton at that time. Below are a few examples:
- The method of inversive geometry. We place a spherical cage in the desert, enter it, and lock it. We perform an inversion with respect to the cage. The lion is then in the interior of the cage, and we are outside.
- The Peano method. Construct by standard methods a continuous curve passing through every point of the desert. It has been remarked [by Hilbert] that it is possible to traverse such a curve in an arbitrarily short time. Armed with a spear, we traverse the curve in a time shorter than that in which a lion can move his own length.
- A topological method. We observe that a lion has the connectivity of the torus. We transport the desert into 4-space. It is then possible to carry out such a deformation that the lion can be returned to 3-space in a knotted condition. He is then helpless.
Frank Smithies (who was visiting from Cambridge, England) and I undertook to write an article about this interesting field, inventing a few extra methods as we went along. We picked Pondicherry (one of the French enclaves in India) as a pseudonym, spelling it Pondiczery to make it look Slavic; we thought of Pondiczery as being Poldavian like Bourbaki3. We submitted our article to the American Mathematical Monthly with a cover letter saying that the author, afraid of repercussions, wanted to use the pen name H. Pétard. In an endeavor to establish a reputation for Pondiczery, we imitated Bourbaki by publishing short notes under his name. Later, when I was teaching at the Pre-Flight School during World War II and wasn’t supposed to publish anything, Pondiczery wrote a substantial number of reviews for Mathematical Reviews....
....MUCH MORE
Sure, it's all fun and games.
Until the hippopotamus arrives:
