TL;DRAbstract
I met Stan Ulam in 1964, at a lecture I was giving in New York. Kac had prevailed on his reluctance to sit for an hour in front of anything but a coffee table in a sidewalk café. After twenty minutes he remembered “an urgent appointment downtown” and walked out. Years later I was to learn that ten, not twenty minutes is his normal limit for a lecture. Once the idea has come across, he reasons, it is more fun to work out the details by yourself; and if the main idea has not been put forward in the first ten minutes, then the lecture is probably not worth your time.
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
I met Stan Ulam in 1964, at a lecture I was giving in New York. Kac had prevailed on his reluctance to sit for an hour in front of anything but a coffee table in a sidewalk café. After twenty minutes he remembered “an urgent appointment downtown” and walked out. Years later I was to learn that ten, not twenty minutes is his normal limit for a lecture. Once the idea has come across, he reasons, it is more fun to work out the details by yourself; and if the main idea has not been put forward in the first ten minutes, then the lecture is probably not worth your time.
Keywords
Chat
Click to start Chat