Scholarly importance of Barry Popik's research

[James A. Landau]

I agree that Barry Popik does a lot of ranting etc.  However, I must admit
that a lot of his "irrelevant" comments are quite interesting, particularly
when they document how he works.  What is especially fascinating is how his
work differs so much from any etymological research I have done.

Barry casts a wide net into the sea and then goes looking through his catch
to find that which have fins and scales.  I do much of my searching through
math and physical science texts, with the result that the proper metaphor for
me might be that I drop an Eckman dredge and try matching the pebbles it
brings up.

Anyone who has done etymological research must have similar stories, but I'd
like to tell mine here.  Joanne Despres talks about how "incredibly
labor-intensive" it is to find antedatings.  On the contrary, I recently had
an antedating that went in search of me.

A few months ago I picked up my copy of Sylvia Nasar's _A Beautiful Mind_ (on
which the movie was more or less based).  It flipped open, apparently at
random, and I saw the word "modulo".  Better yet, "modulo" appeared in a
letter which was quoted verbatim and for which a date was given.

Now "modulo" has a highly technical meaning in number theory, but it has also
acquired a non-technical use as a preposition meaning either "with regards
to" or "except for".  This usage was documented not by someone from an
English-speaking country but by the Brazilian mathematician Carlos Cesar de
Araujo, who posted it on Jeff MIller's Web site on "Earliest Known Uses of
Some of the Words of Mathematics"  (http://members.aol.com/jeff570/m.html).

Sure enough, this usage was being used.  (The rather scathing letter read
""[Nash] proceeded to announce that he had solved it, modulo details").  But
when I got to the computer to inform Jeff, the book had disappeared.

Two months later I still had not found the book and was considering ordering
another copy.  Then my daughter, age 15, suddenly realized that there was no
reason she had to keep her bed in the corner where Mommy and I had placed her
crib for convenience back when she was an infant.  So she asked me to help
her rearrange the furniture.  As we moved her bed the copy of _A Beautiful
Mind_ emerged.  She had borrowed it without telling me.

It was a trivial matter to locate the quote (it being a quoted letter, I only
had to look for a full page of doubly-indented text) and I sent it off to
Jeff.  Lo and behold I got an e-mail from Mark Dunn of the OED saying that
this usage was being added to the on-line OED in the next update, that my
citation antedated anything in the OED files, and unfortunately it had
arrived just too late for the update.

And then yesterday I looked at an old file before deleting it to make sure it
was a duplicate (it was) and what should jump out at me but an e-mail
containing the same usage of "modulo".  Not an antedating, but perhaps the
most recent known usage (1999).  And to add to the coincidence, it was also
yesterday that I found Carlos Cesar de Araujo's current e-mail address on a
mailing list (the only address I had for him was out of date.)

And so, Dr. Despres, one way to find antedatings is to do nothing and let
them jump into your lap.

      - Jim Landau