Andre Weil was a towering figure in 20th century mathematics, his book on Basic Number Theory being just one of his many immortal contributions. (The title is something of a joke; this is a pathbreaking treatise at a very advanced level.)
None of which explains why today, fifteen years after Weil’s death, I received an email from the mathematical publisher Springer-Verlag that reads:
Dear Andre Weil,
We are writing today regarding your book *Basic Number Theory (ISBN: 978-3-662-05980-7), and to let you know about our plans
for an electronic archive, the Springer Book Archives.…
Your author benefits at a glance:
– Your book will be digitized and become an eBook, published on SpringerLink, our online platform, and for e-reading devices such as the Kindle or iPad.
– Your book can never go ‘out-of-print’ and will be preserved for future generations of scientists.
– You will be provided with free access to the electronic version of your book once it is included in the archive.
– You will receive royalties, or can choose to waive them in support of charitable organizations such as INASP or Research4Life,
that help provide the developing world with access to scientific research.Please go to the following website and select your preferred royalty option.
[URL deleted] Yours sincerely,
[Etc.]
This mail was sent to an email address I never use and that, as far as I can tell from Google, appears nowhere on the web, though I have it set up to forward to an address I do read.
How should I respond?
A high honour, indeed.
I suggest you respond by going to the website they give you and selecting your preferred royalty option…
Perhaps it’s a strange phishing attempt? Is the URL really a Springer URL?
Somebody is messing with you.
I think you’re messing with us since you have more experience with publishers than most of the readers of this blog.
You should thank the NSA for their interest…
“How should I respond?”
Dear Johannes Gutenburg
I am excited by your new technology and hope it will make my book available to a wider audience.
“Please remit all past royalties.”
That ISBN doesn’t match that book as far as I can see, although it is a valid ISBN-13 number.
This reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Front_%28The_Simpsons%29
Secretary: Is this the Abraham Simpson who wrote the Itchy and Scratchy episode?
Grampa: Ishy and what? No, you must be some kind of crazy person.
Secretary: I’m sorry, but we have a substantial check here for a Mr. Abraham Simpson.
Grampa: That’s right. I did the Iggy.
“Should” is a loaded word, psychologically. It is rarely used in some circles, as it often implies a judgment although your use, Prof. Landsburg, does not seem to touch this side/tangent. Still, “could” implies choice and this is usually far preferable. Why restrict choices, artificially, or assume that one choice is superior to another–that there some optimum or only one answer?
Far more interesting, to me, is your choice (assuming you had one and did not act on orders–see below) of the phrase “towering figure in 20th century mathematics”. It is also humorous, given Prof. Goedel’s famous remarks at a talk that Mr. Weil attended at IAS where Prof. Goedel began, roughly speaking, as follows:
“Since there has been so little progress in mathematics over the last three hundred years…”.
Prof. Goedel spoke at the end of a talk by A. Robinson on nonstandard (sic) analysis but the remarks were widely interpreted as a colossal putdown of Weil. Why? Weil had been giving a long series of lectures titled, “Three Hundred Years of Number Theory”!!!
But I jest (why not, as Krugman warned us of the police state during Bush II — a great service to humanity, in my view).
More seriously, however, is that “they” changed the online biography of Hassler Whitney soon after my father died. It used to begin with something akin to “Hassler Whitney was a towering figure in 20th century mathematics”. What an amazing coincidence with the beginning of your post, Prof. Landsburg. “Towering figure” (and perhaps the rest) is an exact quote in the previous version of Whitney’s online biography. But it got changed to something relatively pedestrian as all can see/read here:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whitney.html
Why worry about emails and the NSA and and and… this is the same old same old. But here is something new, and I would wager that nobody has previously commented on it, publicly: Whitney’s online biography was changed into something one billionth as interesting as it was previously, at least in terms of the opening line where people who cannot judge work themselves look to the experts for inside gossip so they can position themselves in the optimal way.
My interest? Whitney was a close friend and supporter of my late-father and a man who had a deep interest in education–the books and curriculum of grade school and high school students. He also offered to pay off my father’s substantial personal debt (at least $250,000 in the early 80s, not including interest, although Whitney would have paid millions as he could well afford it, to put it mildly). Sadly, my father turned down his offer (confirmed to me by Hass himself when he took me to lunch at IAS in November of 1984). Indeed, Hass brought up the issue, not me.
Read William Howard’s interview in The Mathematical Intelligencer for a fine description of how Mr. Weil slumped in his chair as Prof. Goedel spoke the truth about the extent of REAL progress in mathematics.
In short, I think that changing Hassler Whitney’s “official” biography (no doubt blessed by the priesthood) is far more interesting than the weird email. Besides, I read a couple days ago that someone called for a “specific corpse” to be delivered to the hospital morgue and this was followed up by an “order” to deliver me, Peter Tennenbaum–intact, albeit dead. See, for example:
http://factnet.org/vbforum/showthread.php?23548-LaRouche-Continued&p=438182#post438182
Which of the two “messages” “should” be considered spookier? Further, if anyone is going to be called a “towering figure in 20th century mathematics” and educated people had to choose between Weil and Whitney, which man is more deserving of the phrase–what is more closely aligned with the truth?
More importantly, why was Whitney downsized, yet now I see the same phrase used by Prof. Landsburg to describe Weil? Whitney probably towered over a whole generation of towering figures. Or perhaps not. At least Whitney took an interest in society. This I know, because I actually knew him (and his wife Mary) very very well. Weil always struck me as clinically insane, but most mathematicians met and still meet this profile.
Or to put it slightly better, when John Conway told me that my father was crazy, I said “Of course he was crazy”. Conway then said, “No, Peter, I mean REALLY crazy”. To which I responded with, “Okay, Conway, you’re telling me that if the entire Princeton Math Dept. were paraded before as team of psychiatrists that my FATHER would come off poorly compared to YOU guys! You are out of your f…ing mind.”
But I digress…
Response:
The Andre Weil you think I am is not the Andre Weil :-)
Grrr the dont sell (ISBN: 978-3-662-05980-7) anymore in the netherlands….
I used to know the head of Springer-Verlag and would be happy to call him directly to inquire about your “basic-confusion”.
Of course, perhaps the email originated from an entirely different “source”. Ask Saul Lubkin. He has a very high opinion of you and my father helped place him at the U of R as a favor to Weil. One of my best friends–a Russian mathematician–studied under Lubkin and got his Ph.D here 15 years ago. He told me of Lubkin’s high regard for you as Lubkin supposedly said that you actually understood some Algebraic Geometry.
“Mystery is simply future history” (Peter Tennenbaum, circa early Spring 2013). All will become crystal clear–certainly in the Afterlife–as our experiences in THIS world simply provides the raw material for the REAL learning which takes place later (here I paraphrase Prof. Goedel).
There is a reason–a cause–for everything. This is the basis of science.