ProofWiki:Jokes/Mathematicians' Party

Once upon a time, all the mathematicians who had ever lived attended a great big party, in order to let their hair down and enjoy themselves for once.

Plenty of physicists attended, and quite a few chemists and biologists came too.

Our roving reporter was at the door, and these are some of the things he observed ...
 * Archimedes was found floating naked in the bath. He later agreed that, on balance, he'd screwed up. He was an early leaver.


 * Max Planck came, but stayed only a very short time.


 * Johann Bernoulli and Jacob Bernoulli got ejected from the party for sliding down the brachistochrones.


 * Kurt Gödel was denied entry because he couldn’t prove that he was invited.


 * Werner Heisenberg may or may not have been there; we're not certain.


 * Aristotle definitely was there, or wasn't. But not both.


 * Erwin Schrödinger was both present and absent, until someone checked, at which point he collapsed.


 * Hamilton went into every room once only, trying to find Euler, who passed through every door exactly once trying to find Hamilton.


 * Fermat claimed he would attend, then died. He was going to send his acceptance on the actual invitation itself, but the margin was too narrow.


 * Georg Cantor wasn't on the guest list (I can't count how many times that's happened).


 * Blaise Pascal wagered he was better off attending than not.


 * Maria Agnesi thought it was a costume party due to a mistranslation, and showed up dressed as a witch.


 * Frank Ramsey spent much time socializing with a group of mutual friends or a group of mutual strangers.


 * Newton started up a fight with Leibniz regarding who arrived first.


 * Paul Erdős shook hands with everyone who shook hands with someone who shook hands with him &mdash; including himself.


 * Pavlov brought his dog, which immediately started chasing Schrödinger's cat.


 * Felix Hausdorff was unfortunately unable to attend; he sent his topologies.


 * Grigori Perelman was multiply invited, but absolutely refused to attend.


 * Douglas Hofstadter managed to attend despite a horrible cold. He tried to make conversation but the only sounds he could make were "gurgle", "atishoo" and "bark".


 * Erland Bring did bring his radical.


 * Évariste Galois attended, but couldn't handle a few shots.


 * A whole crowd of unidentified metric spatialists gatecrashed, thinking it was an open ball.


 * Bazinga.


 * Vilfredo Pareto observed that $80\%$ of the food was being eaten by $20\%$ of the guests.


 * Paul Cohen worked out, all by himself, that whether he continued to stay at the party was independent upon whether anyone else did.


 * Oliver Heaviside wasn't in attendance until time $t = c$.

''Many, many other mathematicians and physicists were there. Please tell any stories about them that you know.''