ANECDOTES ABOUT FAMOUS SCIENTISTS

This story is about the number 2^67-1, the 67th Mersenne number (Numbers,Mersenne had claimed to be prime, which was proven to be non-prime in 1903by F.N.Cole (1861-1927). In the October meeting of the AMS, Cole announceda talk "On the Factorisation of Large Numbers". He walked up to the blackboard without saying a word, calculated by handthe value of 2^67, carefully subtracted 1. Then he multiplied two numbers(which were 193707721 and 761838257287). Both results written on theblackboard were equal. Cole silently walked back to his seat, and this issaid to be the first and only talk held during an AMS meeting where theaudience applauded. There were no questions. It took Cole about 3 years,each sunday, to find this factorisation, according to what he said. This is freely quoted from E.T.Bell's book "Mathematics: Queen and Servantof Science", published in London, 1952; you can find the story in DavidWells: "The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers" (PenguinBooks, 1986) For the curious: 2^67 -1 = 193707721 x 761838257287 = 147573952589676412927 Why don't we think like this ? The great logician Bertrand Russell (or was it A.N. Whitehead?) once claimed that he could prove anything if given that 1+1=1. So one day, some smarty-pants asked him, "Ok. Prove that you're thePope." He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope is one.Therefore, the Pope and I are one." hah ....Smart or is it too simple ...hmmm It is recorded in Sir Harold Jeffreys' Scientific Inference, in a note to chapterone. Jeffreys remarks that the fact that everything followed from a single contradiction had been noticed by Aristotle (I doubt this way of putting itis quite correct, but that is beside the point). He goes on to say that McTaggart denied the consequence: "if 2+2=5, how can you prove that I am the pope?" Hardy is supposed to have replied: "if 2+2=5, 4=5; subtract 3;then 1=2; but McTaggart and the pope are two; therefore McTaggart and the Pope are one." When I consider this story, I am astonished at how much more brilliant some people are or is it just simple plain old common sense ?