CHAPTER X

PERSONS AND ANECDOTES

(N-Z)

=1001.= When he had a few moments for diversion, he [Napoleon] not unfrequently employed them over a book of logarithms, in which he always found recreation.--ABBOTT, J. S. C.

_Napoleon Bonaparte (New York, 1904), Vol. 1, chap. 10._

=1002.= The name of Sir Isaac Newton has by general consent been placed at the head of those great men who have been the ornaments of their species.... The philosopher [Laplace], indeed, to whom posterity will probably assign a place next to Newton, has characterized the Principia as pre-eminent above all the productions of human intellect.--BREWSTER, D.

_Life of Sir Isaac Newton (London, 1831), pp. 1, 2._

=1003.= Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say a gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton’s mind.--EMERSON.

_Essay on History._

=1004.= The law of gravitation is indisputably and incomparably the greatest scientific discovery ever made, whether we look at the advance which it involved, the extent of truth disclosed, or the fundamental and satisfactory nature of this truth.

--WHEWELL, W.

_History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5._

=1005.= Newton’s theory is the circle of generalization which includes all the others [as Kepler’s laws, Ptolemy’s theory, etc.];--the highest point of the inductive ascent;--the catastrophe of the philosophic drama to which Plato had prologized;--the point to which men’s minds had been journeying for two thousand years.--WHEWELL, W.

_History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5._

=1006.= The efforts of the great philosopher [Newton] were always superhuman; the questions which he did not solve were incapable of solution in his time.--ARAGO.

_Eulogy on Laplace, [Baden Powell] Smithsonian Report, 1874, p. 133._

=1007.=

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. --POPE, A.

_Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton._

=1008.=

There Priest of Nature! dost thou shine, _Newton!_ a King among the Kings divine. --SOUTHEY.

_Translation of a Greek Ode on Astronomy._

=1009.=

O’er Nature’s laws God cast the veil of night, Out-blaz’d a Newton’s soul--and all was light. --HILL, AARON.

_On Sir Isaac Newton._

=1010.= Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.--LEIBNITZ.

_Quoted by F. R. Moulton: Introduction to Astronomy (New York, 1906), p. 199._

=1011.= Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.--LAGRANGE.

_Quoted by F. R. Moulton: Introduction to Astronomy (New York, 1906), p. 199._

=1012.= A monument to Newton! a monument to Shakespeare! Look up to Heaven--look into the Human Heart. Till the planets and the passions--the affections and the fixed stars are extinguished--their names cannot die.--WILSON, JOHN.

_Noctes Ambrosianae._

=1013.= Such men as Newton and Linnaeus are incidental, but august, teachers of religion.--WILSON, JOHN.

_Essays: Education of the People._

=1014.= Sir Isaac Newton, the supreme representative of Anglo-Saxon genius.--ELLIS, HAVELOCK.

_Study of British Genius (London, 1904), p. 49._

=1015.= Throughout his life Newton must have devoted at least as much attention to chemistry and theology as to mathematics....

--BALL, W. W. R.

_History of Mathematics (London, 1901), p. 335._

=1016.= There was a time when he [Newton] was possessed with the old fooleries of astrology; and another when he was so far gone in those of chemistry, as to be upon the hunt after the philosopher’s stone.--REV. J. SPENCE.

_Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men (London, 1868), p. 54._

=1017.= For several years this great man [Newton] was intensely occupied in endeavoring to discover a way of changing the base metals into gold.... There were periods when his furnace fires were not allowed to go out for six weeks; he and his secretary sitting up alternate nights to replenish them.--PARTON, JAMES.

_Sir Isaac Newton._

=1018.= On the day of Cromwell’s death, when Newton was sixteen, a great storm raged all over England. He used to say, in his old age, that on that day he made his first purely scientific experiment. To ascertain the force of the wind, he first jumped with the wind and then against it; and, by comparing these distances with the extent of his own jump on a calm day, he was enabled to compute the force of the storm. When the wind blew thereafter, he used to say it was so many feet strong.

--PARTON, JAMES.

_Sir Isaac Newton._

=1019.= Newton lectured now and then to the few students who chose to hear him; and it is recorded that very frequently he came to the lecture-room and found it empty. On such occasions he would remain fifteen minutes, and then, if no one came, return to his apartments.--PARTON, JAMES.

_Sir Isaac Newton._

=1020.= Sir Isaac Newton, though so deep in algebra and fluxions, could not readily make up a common account: and, when he was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody else to make up his accounts for him.--REV. J. SPENCE.

_Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men (London, 1858), p. 132._

=1021.= We have one of his [Newton’s] college memorandum-books, which is highly interesting. The following are some of the entries: “Drills, gravers, a hone, a hammer, and a mandril, 5s.;” “a magnet, 16s.;” “compasses, 2s.;” “glass bubbles, 4s.;” “at the tavern several other times, £1;” “spent on my cousin, 12s.;” “on other acquaintances, 10s.;” “Philosophical Intelligences, 9s. 6d.;” “lost at cards twice, 15s.;” “at the tavern twice, 3s. 6d.;” “to three prisms, £3;” “four ounces of putty, 1s. 4d.;” “Bacon’s Miscellanies, 1s. 6d.;” “a bible binding, 3s.;” “for oranges to my sister, 4s. 2d.;” “for aquafortis, sublimate, oyle pink, fine silver, antimony, vinegar, spirit of wine, white lead, salt of tartar, £2;” “Theatrum chemicum, £1 8s.”--PARTON, JAMES.

_Sir Isaac Newton._

=1022.= On one occasion, when he was giving a dinner to some friends at the university, he left the table to get them a bottle of wine; but, on his way to the cellar, he fell into reflection, forgot his errand and his company, went to his chamber, put on his surplice, and proceeded to the chapel. Sometimes he would go into the street half dressed, and on discovering his condition, run back in great haste, much abashed. Often, while strolling in his garden, he would suddenly stop, and then run rapidly to his room, and begin to write, standing, on the first piece of paper that presented itself. Intending to dine in the public hall, he would go out in a brown study, take the wrong turn, walk a while, and then return to his room, having totally forgotten the dinner. Once having dismounted from his horse to lead him up a hill, the horse slipped his head out of the bridle; but Newton, oblivious, never discovered it till, on reaching a tollgate at the top of the hill, he turned to remount and perceived that the bridle which he held in his hand had no horse attached to it. His secretary records that his forgetfulness of his dinner was an excellent thing for his old housekeeper, who “sometimes found both dinner and supper scarcely tasted of, which the old woman has very pleasantly and mumpingly gone away with.” On getting out of bed in the morning, he has been discovered to sit on his bedside for hours without dressing himself, utterly absorbed in thought.--PARTON, JAMES.

_Sir Isaac Newton._

=1023.= I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only as a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.--NEWTON, I.

_Quoted by Rev. J. Spence: Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men (London, 1858), p. 40._

=1024.= If I have seen farther than Descartes, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.--NEWTON, I.

_Quoted by James Parton: Sir Isaac Newton._

=1025.= Newton could not admit that there was any difference between him and other men, except in the possession of such habits as ... perseverance and vigilance. When he was asked how he made his discoveries, he answered, “by always thinking about them;” and at another time he declared that if he had done anything, it was due to nothing but industry and patient thought: “I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”--WHEWELL, W.

_History of the Inductive Sciences, Bk. 7, chap. 2, sect. 5._

=1026.= Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.--BALL, W. W. R.

_History of Mathematics (London, 1901), p. 358._

=1027.= Foreshadowings of the principles and even of the language of [the infinitesimal] calculus can be found in the writings of Napier, Kepler, Cavalieri, Pascal, Fermat, Wallis, and Barrow. It was Newton’s good luck to come at a time when everything was ripe for the discovery, and his ability enabled him to construct almost at once a complete calculus.--BALL, W. W. R.

_History of Mathematics (London, 1901), p. 356._

=1028.= Kepler’s suggestion of gravitation with the inverse distance, and Bouillaud’s proposed substitution of the inverse square of the distance, are things which Newton knew better than his modern readers. I have discovered two anagrams on his name, which are quite conclusive: the notion of gravitation was _not new_; but Newton _went on_.--DE MORGAN, A.

_Budget of Paradoxes (London, 1872), p. 82._

=1029.= For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he [Gauss] used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.--BALL, W. W. R.

_History of Mathematics (London, 1901), p. 362._

=1030.= To know him [Sylvester] was to know one of the historic figures of all time, one of the immortals; and when he was really moved to speak, his eloquence equalled his genius.--HALSTED, G. B.

_F. Cajori’s Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (Washington, 1890), p. 265._

=1031.= Professor Sylvester’s first high class at the new university Johns Hopkins consisted of only one student, G. B. Halsted, who had persisted in urging Sylvester to lecture on the modern algebra. The attempt to lecture on this subject led him into new investigations in quantics.--CAJORI, F.

_Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (Washington, 1890), p. 264._

=1032.= But for the persistence of a student of this university in urging upon me his desire to study with me the modern algebra I should never have been led into this investigation; and the new facts and principles which I have discovered in regard to it (important facts, I believe), would, so far as I am concerned, have remained still hidden in the womb of time. In vain I represented to this inquisitive student that he would do better to take up some other subject lying less off the beaten track of study, such as the higher parts of the calculus or elliptic functions, or the theory of substitutions, or I wot not what besides. He stuck with perfect respectfulness, but with invincible pertinacity, to his point. He would have the new algebra (Heaven knows where he had heard about it, for it is almost unknown in this continent), that or nothing. I was obliged to yield, and what was the consequence? In trying to throw light upon an obscure explanation in our text-book, my brain took fire, I plunged with re-quickened zeal into a subject which I had for years abandoned, and found food for thoughts which have engaged my attention for a considerable time past, and will probably occupy all my powers of contemplation advantageously for several months to come.--SYLVESTER, J. J.

_Johns Hopkins Commemoration Day Address; Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 3, p. 76._

=1033.= Sylvester was incapable of reading mathematics in a purely receptive way. Apparently a subject either fired in his brain a train of active and restless thought, or it would not retain his attention at all. To a man of such a temperament, it would have been peculiarly helpful to live in an atmosphere in which his human associations would have supplied the stimulus which he could not find in mere reading. The great modern work in the theory of functions and in allied disciplines, he never became acquainted with....

What would have been the effect if, in the prime of his powers, he had been surrounded by the influences which prevail in Berlin or in Göttingen? It may be confidently taken for granted that he would have done splendid work in those domains of analysis, which have furnished the laurels of the great mathematicians of Germany and France in the second half of the present century.--FRANKLIN, F.

_Johns Hopkins University Circulars 16 (1897), p. 54._

=1034.= If we survey the mathematical works of Sylvester, we recognize indeed a considerable abundance, but in contradistinction to Cayley--not a versatility toward separate fields, but, with few exceptions--a confinement to arithmetic-algebraic branches....

The concept of _Function_ of a continuous variable, the fundamental concept of modern mathematics, plays no role, is indeed scarcely mentioned in the entire work of Sylvester--Sylvester was combinatorist [combinatoriker].--NOETHER, M.

_Mathematische Annalen, Bd. 50 (1898), pp. 134-135._

=1035.= Sylvester’s _methods!_ He had none. “Three lectures will be delivered on a New Universal Algebra,” he would say; then, “The course must be extended to twelve.” It did last all the rest of that year. The following year the course was to be _Substitutions-Theorie_, by Netto. We all got the text. He lectured about three times, following the text closely and stopping sharp at the end of the hour. Then he began to think about matrices again. “I must give one lecture a week on those,” he said. He could not confine himself to the hour, nor to the one lecture a week. Two weeks were passed, and Netto was forgotten entirely and never mentioned again. Statements like the following were not unfrequent in his lectures: “I haven’t proved this, but I am as sure as I can be of anything that it must be so. From this it will follow, etc.” At the next lecture it turned out that what he was so sure of was false. Never mind, he kept on forever guessing and trying, and presently a wonderful discovery followed, then another and another. Afterward he would go back and work it all over again, and surprise us with all sorts of side lights. He then made another leap in the dark, more treasures were discovered, and so on forever.--DAVIS, E. W.

_Cajori’s Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U.S. (Washington, 1890), pp. 265-266._

=1036.= I can see him [Sylvester] now, with his white beard and few locks of gray hair, his forehead wrinkled o’er with thoughts, writing rapidly his figures and formulae on the board, sometimes explaining as he wrote, while we, his listeners, caught the reflected sounds from the board. But stop, something is not right, he pauses, his hand goes to his forehead to help his thought, he goes over the work again, emphasizes the leading points, and finally discovers his difficulty. Perhaps it is some error in his figures, perhaps an oversight in the reasoning. Sometimes, however, the difficulty is not elucidated, and then there is not much to the rest of the lecture. But at the next lecture we would hear of some new discovery that was the outcome of that difficulty, and of some article for the Journal, which he had begun. If a text-book had been taken up at the beginning, with the intention of following it, that text-book was most likely doomed to oblivion for the rest of the term, or until the class had been made listeners to every new thought and principle that had sprung from the laboratory of his mind, in consequence of that first difficulty. Other difficulties would soon appear, so that no text-book could last more than half of the term. In this way his class listened to almost all of the work that subsequently appeared in the Journal. It seemed to be the quality of his mind that he must adhere to one subject. He would think about it, talk about it to his class, and finally write about it for the Journal. The merest accident might start him, but once started, every moment, every thought was given to it, and, as much as possible, he read what others had done in the same direction; but this last seemed to be his real point; he could not read without finding difficulties in the way of understanding the author. Thus, often his own work reproduced what had been done by others, and he did not find it out until too late.

A notable example of this is in his theory of cyclotomic functions, which he had reproduced in several foreign journals, only to find that he had been greatly anticipated by foreign authors. It was manifest, one of the critics said, that the learned professor had not read Kummer’s elementary results in the theory of ideal primes. Yet Professor Smith’s report on the theory of numbers, which contained a full synopsis of Kummer’s theory, was Professor Sylvester’s constant companion.

This weakness of Professor Sylvester, in not being able to read what others had done, is perhaps a concomitant of his peculiar genius. Other minds could pass over little difficulties and not be troubled by them, and so go on to a final understanding of the results of the author. But not so with him. A difficulty, however small, worried him, and he was sure to have difficulties until the subject had been worked over in his own way, to correspond with his own mode of thought. To read the work of others, meant therefore to him an almost independent development of it. Like the man whose pleasure in life is to pioneer the way for society into the forests, his rugged mind could derive satisfaction only in hewing out its own paths; and only when his efforts brought him into the uncleared fields of mathematics did he find his place in the Universe.--HATHAWAY, A. S.

_F. Cajori’s Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (Washington, 1890), pp. 266-267._

=1037.= Professor Cayley has since informed me that the theorem about whose origin I was in doubt, will be found in Schläfli’s “De Eliminatione.” This is not the first unconscious plagiarism I have been guilty of towards this eminent man whose friendship I am proud to claim. A more glaring case occurs in a note by me in the “Comptes Rendus,” on the twenty-seven straight lines of cubic surfaces, where I believe I have followed (like one walking in his sleep), down to the very nomenclature and notation, the substance of a portion of a paper inserted by Schläfli in the “Mathematical Journal,” which bears my name as one of the editors upon the face.--SYLVESTER, J. J.

_Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1864), p. 642._

=1038.= He [Sylvester] had one remarkable peculiarity. He seldom remembered theorems, propositions, etc., but had always to deduce them when he wished to use them. In this he was the very antithesis of Cayley, who was thoroughly conversant with everything that had been done in every branch of mathematics.

I remember once submitting to Sylvester some investigations that I had been engaged on, and he immediately denied my first statement, saying that such a proposition had never been heard of, let alone proved. To his astonishment, I showed him a paper of his own in which he had proved the proposition; in fact, I believe the object of his paper had been the very proof which was so strange to him.--DURFEE, W. P.

_F. Cajori’s Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (Washington, 1890), p. 268._

=1039.= A short, broad man of tremendous vitality, the physical type of Hereward, the last of the English, and his brother-in-arms, Winter, Sylvester’s capacious head was ever lost in the highest cloud-lands of pure mathematics. Often in the dead of night he would get his favorite pupil, that he might communicate the very last product of his creative thought. Everything he saw suggested to him something new in the higher algebra. This transmutation of everything into new mathematics was a revelation to those who knew him intimately. They began to do it themselves. His ease and fertility of invention proved a constant encouragement, while his contempt for provincial stupidities, such as the American hieroglyphics for Π and _e_, which have even found their way into Webster’s Dictionary, made each young worker apply to himself the strictest tests.--HALSTED, G. B.

_F. Cajori’s Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (Washington, 1890), p. 265._

=1040.= Sylvester’s writings are flowery and eloquent. He was able to make the dullest subject bright, fresh and interesting. His enthusiasm is evident in every line. He would get quite close up to his subject, so that everything else looked small in comparison, and for the time would think and make others think that the world contained no finer matter for contemplation. His handwriting was bad, and a trouble to his printers. His papers were finished with difficulty. No sooner was the manuscript in the editor’s hands than alterations, corrections, ameliorations and generalizations would suggest themselves to his mind, and every post would carry further directions to the editors and printers.--MACMAHON. P. A.

_Nature, Vol. 55 (1897), p. 494._

=1041.= The enthusiasm of Sylvester for his own work, which manifests itself here as always, indicates one of his characteristic qualities: a high degree of _subjectivity_ in his productions and publications. Sylvester was so fully possessed by the matter which for the time being engaged his attention, that it appeared to him and was designated by him as the summit of all that is important, remarkable and full of future promise. It would excite his phantasy and power of imagination in even a greater measure than his power of reflection, so much so that he could never marshal the ability to master his subject-matter, much less to present it in an orderly manner.

Considering that he was also somewhat of a poet, it will be easier to overlook the poetic flights which pervade his writing, often bombastic, sometimes furnishing apt illustrations; more damaging is the complete lack of form and orderliness of his publications and their sketchlike character, ... which must be accredited at least as much to lack of objectivity as to a superfluity of ideas. Again, the text is permeated with associated emotional expressions, bizarre utterances and paradoxes and is everywhere accompanied by notes, which constitute an essential part of Sylvester’s method of presentation, embodying relations, whether proximate or remote, which momentarily suggested themselves. These notes, full of inspiration and occasional flashes of genius, are the more stimulating owing to their incompleteness. But none of his works manifest a desire to penetrate the subject from all sides and to allow it to mature; each mere surmise, conceptions which arose during publication, immature thoughts and even errors were ushered into publicity at the moment of their inception, with utmost carelessness, and always with complete unfamiliarity of the literature of the subject. Nowhere is there the least trace of self-criticism. No one can be expected to read the treatises entire, for in the form in which they are available they fail to give a clear view of the matter under contemplation.

Sylvester’s was not a harmoniously gifted or well-balanced mind, but rather an instinctively active and creative mind, free from egotism. His reasoning moved in generalizations, was frequently influenced by analysis and at times was guided even by mystical numerical relations. His reasoning consists less frequently of pure intelligible conclusions than of inductions, or rather conjectures incited by individual observations and verifications. In this he was guided by an algebraic sense, developed through long occupation with processes of forms, and this led him luckily to general fundamental truths which in some instances remain veiled. His lack of system is here offset by the advantage of freedom from purely mechanical logical activity.

The exponents of his essential characteristics are an intuitive talent and a faculty of invention to which we owe a series of ideas of lasting value and bearing the germs of fruitful methods. To no one more fittingly than to Sylvester can be applied one of the mottos of the Philosophic Magazine:

“Admiratio generat quaestionem, quaestio investigationem investigatio inventionem.”--NOETHER, M.

_Mathematische Annalen, Bd. 50 (1898), pp. 155-160._

=1042.= Perhaps I may without immodesty lay claim to the appellation of Mathematical Adam, as I believe that I have given more names (passed into general circulation) of the creatures of the mathematical reason than all the other mathematicians of the age combined.--SYLVESTER, J. J.

_Nature, Vol. 37 (1887-1888), p. 162._

=1043.= Tait dubbed Maxwell dp/dt, for according to thermodynamics dp/dt = JCM (where C denotes Carnot’s function) the initials of (J. C.) Maxwell’s name. On the other hand Maxwell denoted Thomson by T and Tait by T′; so that it became customary to quote Thomson and Tait’s Treatise on Natural Philosophy as T and T′.--MACFARLANE, A.

_Bibliotheca Mathematica, Bd. 3 (1903), p. 189._

=1044.= In future times Tait will be best known for his work in the quaternion analysis. Had it not been for his expositions, developments and applications, Hamilton’s invention would be today, in all probability, a mathematical curiosity.

--MACFARLANE, A.

_Bibliotheca Mathematica, Bd. 3 (1903), p. 189._

=1045.= Not seldom did he [Sir William Thomson], in his writings, set down some mathematical statement with the prefacing remark “it is obvious that” to the perplexity of mathematical readers, to whom the statement was anything but obvious from such mathematics as preceded it on the page. To him it was obvious for physical reasons that might not suggest themselves at all to the mathematician, however competent.--THOMPSON, S. P.

_Life of Lord Kelvin (London, 1910), p. 1136._

=1046.= The following is one of the many stories told of “old Donald McFarlane” the faithful assistant of Sir William Thomson.

The father of a new student when bringing him to the University, after calling to see the Professor [Thomson] drew his assistant to one side and besought him to tell him what his son must do that he might stand well with the Professor. “You want your son to stand weel with the Profeessorr?” asked McFarlane. “Yes.” “Weel, then, he must just have a guid bellyful o’ mathematics!”

--THOMPSON, S. P.

_Life of Lord Kelvin (London, 1910), p. 420._

=1047.= The following story (here a little softened from the vernacular) was narrated by Lord Kelvin himself when dining at Trinity Hall:--

A certain rough Highland lad at the university had done exceedingly well, and at the close of the session gained prizes both in mathematics and in metaphysics. His old father came up from the farm to see his son receive the prizes, and visited the College. Thomson was deputed to show him round the place. “Weel, Mr. Thomson,” asked the old man, “and what may these mathematics be, for which my son has getten a prize?” “I told him,” replied Thomson, “that mathematics meant reckoning with figures, and calculating.” “Oo ay,” said the old man, “he’ll ha’ getten that fra’ me: I were ever a braw hand at the countin’.” After a pause he resumed: “And what, Mr. Thomson, might these metapheesics be?” “I endeavoured,” replied Thomson, “to explain how metaphysics was the attempt to express in language the indefinite.” The old Highlander stood still and scratched his head. “Oo ay: may be he’ll ha’ getten that fra’ his mither. She were aye a bletherin’ body.”--THOMPSON, S. P.

_Life of Lord Kelvin (London, 1910), p. 1124._

=1048.= Lord Kelvin, unable to meet his classes one day, posted the following notice on the door of his lecture room,--

“Professor Thomson will not meet his classes today.” The disappointed class decided to play a joke on the professor. Erasing the “c” they left the legend to read,--

“Professor Thomson will not meet his lasses today.” When the class assembled the next day in anticipation of the effect of their joke, they were astonished and chagrined to find that the professor had outwitted them. The legend of yesterday was now found to read,--

“Professor Thomson will not meet his asses today.”[9]

--NORTHRUP, CYRUS.

_University of Washington Address, November 2, 1908._

[9] Author’s note. My colleague, Dr. E. T. Bell, informs me that this same anecdote is associated with the name of J. S. Blackie, Professor of Greek at Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

=1049.= One morning a great noise proceeded from one of the classrooms [of the Braunsberger gymnasium] and on investigation it was found that Weierstrass, who was to give the recitation, had not appeared. The director went in person to Weierstrass’ dwelling and on knocking was told to come in. There sat Weierstrass by a glimmering lamp in a darkened room though it was daylight outside. He had worked the night through and had not noticed the approach of daylight. When the director reminded him of the noisy throng of students who were waiting for him, his only reply was that he could impossibly interrupt his work; that he was about to make an important discovery which would attract attention in scientific circles.--LAMPE, E.

_Karl Weierstrass: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, Bd. 6 (1897), pp. 38-39._

=1050.= Weierstrass related ... that he followed Sylvester’s papers on the theory of algebraic forms very attentively until Sylvester began to employ Hebrew characters. That was more than he could stand and after that he quit him.--LAMPE, E.

_Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau, Bd. 12 (1897), p. 361._