In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, each paintingsing on mathematics at Princeton University, submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly what they believed was once “a brand new international document within the number of phrases in a [math] paper.”
Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I submitted our paper that included simply two phrases, ‘n2 + 2 can’ and our two drawings. [See one of them above.]” The story then continues: “The American Mathematical Monthly was once surprised, and didn’t know what to do about our new international document of a 2‑phrase article. Two days later, on April 30, 2004, the Editorial Assistant Mrs. Margaret Combs acknowledged the receipt of the paper”:
The Monthly publishes exposition of mathematics at many levels, and it contains articles each lengthy and quick. Your article, however, is a little too quick to be a just right Monthly article… A line or two of explanation would actually lend a hand.
Soifer writers: “The similar day on the cofcharge hour I requested John [Conway], ‘What do you assume?’ His solution was once concise, ‘Don’t surrender too easily.’ Accordingly, I answered [to] The Monthly the similar day”:
I admirefully disagree {that a} quick paper basically—and this paper particularly—simply because of its measurement should be “a little too quick to be a just right Monthly article.” Is there a connection between quantity and quality?… We have now posed a tremendous (in our opinion) open problem and recorded two distinct “behold-style” proofs of our advance in this problem. What else is there to provide an explanation for?
Soifer provides: “The Monthly, apparently felt outgunned, for on Might 4, 2004, the answer got here from The Monthly’s most sensible gun, Editor-in-Leader Bruce Buddyka”:
The Monthly publishes two sorts of papers: “articles,” which can be substantive expository papers ranging in duration from about six to twenty-five pages, and “notes,” which can be quicker, frequently somewhat extra technical items (typically within the one-to-five web page vary). I will ship your paper to the notes editor if you want, however I be expecting that he’ll no longer be interested in it both as a result of its duration and absence of any substantial accompanew yorking textual content. The standard approach during which we use such quick papers in this day and age is as “boxed filler” on pages that would othersmart contain a large number of the clean house that publishers abhor. For those who’d permit us to make use of your paper in that approach, I’d be happy to publish it.
Soifer concludes: “John Conapproach and I settle fored the ‘filler’, and within the January 2005 factor our paper was once published.” Victory!
Get more of the backstory here.
Related Content:
The Quickest-Identified Paper Published in a Serious Math Journal: Two Succinct Sentences
John Nash’s Tremendous Quick PhD Thesis: 26 Pages & Two Citations
The Map of Mathematics: Animation Presentations How The entire Different Fields in Math Have compatibility Together
