John Nash's "variability" (was Re: Scholarly importance of Barry Popik's research)

[Paul McFedries]

James,

I happened to be reading _A Beautiful Mind_ when you wrote this. A
couple of days later, I came across the letter you mentioned.
Strangely, the letter says "module details." This is an obvious typo
(since "module details" is meaningless) that I assume was corrected in
later editions. I was reading the original hardcover.

What I also enjoyed in that letter was the closing:

"[Nash is] hasty as X, obstreperous as Y, for arbitrary X and Y."

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: Scholarly importance of Barry Popik's research


> 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.