“Lobachevsky” -- Tom Lehrer
Nikolai Lobachevsky was a great mathematician. His accomplishments in geometry, differential geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, and many other sorts of esoteric lore the meanings of which completely elude me. He is also famed for his skills and discoveries involving algebraic equations. In my college years, I did score rather high in algebra, but I reluctantly confess it slightly possible that Lobachevsky’s skills even there exceeded my own.
But what was Lobachevsky not? He was not a plagiarizer! So why did Tom Lehrer slander the late Russian intellectual? Well, first off, it’s not actually slander, and secondly, well, that will take some explaining. During his 15-year-long off-and-on career in Harvard’s mathematics doctoral program working on a dissertation he never bothered to compete, Lehrer wrote songs. Lots of songs. Lots of funny songs. In 1951-51, Lehrer, then teaching undergraduate mathematics, joined with other members of the Harvard faculty to create a comic musical revue showcasing a number of his songs. “Lobachevsky” was among those songs. But why Nikolai Lobachevsky? Simply because the pronunciation lent itself well to comedy.
But what was Lobachevsky not? He was not a plagiarizer! So why did Tom Lehrer slander the late Russian intellectual? Well, first off, it’s not actually slander, and secondly, well, that will take some explaining. During his 15-year-long off-and-on career in Harvard’s mathematics doctoral program working on a dissertation he never bothered to compete, Lehrer wrote songs. Lots of songs. Lots of funny songs. In 1951-51, Lehrer, then teaching undergraduate mathematics, joined with other members of the Harvard faculty to create a comic musical revue showcasing a number of his songs. “Lobachevsky” was among those songs. But why Nikolai Lobachevsky? Simply because the pronunciation lent itself well to comedy.
Russia has always been something of a perplexing oddity. In college, I studied the evolution and composition of urban centers and populations under the tutelage of a sage and elderly German historian whose accent was as thick as his learning. One day we were discussing the peculiarities of some uniquely Russian city feature when a student asked, “Why do Russians do that?”
The agèd professor shrugged haplessly and muttered, “It’s just something in the Russian soul.”
The agèd professor shrugged haplessly and muttered, “It’s just something in the Russian soul.”
Not a very precise answer, but as good an answer as any. The Russian soul is a strange one indeed. Russia has long been unlearned and uncultured by European standards, populated by illiterate peasants characterized by fanatical religious superstitions and mind bogglingly, insanely high rates of alcoholism. Yet Russia, this garden of brutal ignorance, has grown more than its share of this earth’s most erudite authors, mellifluous musicians, prolific scientists, perspicacious chess masters, crafty generals, and sagacious mathematicians. Lobachevsky ranks among the most sagacious of those sagacious mathematicians.
Nikolai Lobachevsky
Portrait by Lev Kryukov, c. 1843
The future mathematician was born on 1 December 1792 -- or on 20 November according to the Julian (or Old Style) calendar used in Russia as recently as 1918 -- into a modest family of Polish descent. Most of his life was spent in Kazan, the largest city within the now defunct Russian Kazan Governorate, a region more commonly called Tatarstan. It was there he attended preparatory school, and it is well he did. His remarkable abilities earned Lobachevsky a scholarship to the newly established Kazan University where he took advanced degrees in Mathematics and Physics. Lobachevsky would remain at the university as professor of math, physics, and astronomy. He would later become rector.
Lobachevsky did not limit his interests to academica. He was also a family man. Judging from the huge number of children his wife bore him, 18 by some accounts, he and she certainly seemed extraordinarily fond of each other. Sadly it is thought only seven survived to adulthood.
Good health seems to have eluded Lobachevsky. He was dismissed from his university position for health related difficulties while still in his early 50s. By the time of his death on 24 February 1856 (12 February Old Style) at the age of 63, he was nearly blind and totally lame.
Lobachevsky Explores Non-Euclidean Geometry
I will not list here Lobachevsky's remarkable contributions to mathematics as I fear embarrassing myself by discussing a topic far beyond my comprehension, but according to more informed sources, they are impressive.
Now on to the song.
For many years now, Mr. Danny Kaye, who has been my particular idol since childbirth, has been doing a routine about the great Russian director Stanislavsky and the secret of success in the acting profession. And I thought it would be interesting to steal… to adapt this idea to the field of mathematics. I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year, just teaching.
Be that as it may, some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is the story of the great Russian mathematician Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.
.
Who made me the genius I am today
The mathematician that others all quote?
Who's the professor that made me that way
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat?
One man deserves the credit
One man deserves the blame
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach...
I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"
And ever since I meet this man
My life is not the same
And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach...
I am never forget the day
I am given first original paper to write
It was on analytical algebraic topology
Of locally Euclidean metrization
Of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifold
Bozhe moi! [My God}
This I know from nothing
What I'm going to do
I think of great Lobachevsky and get idea - haha!
I have a friend in Minsk
Who has a friend in Pinsk
Whose friend in Omsk
Has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk
His friend in Alexandrovsk
Has friend in Petropavlovsk
Whose friend somehow is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk
And when his work is done
Haha! Begins the fun
From Dnepropetrovsk to Petropavlovsk
By way of Iliysk and over Novorossiysk
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk
To Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run
Yes, to me the news will run!
And then I write by morning, night
And afternoon, and pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed
When he finds out I published first!
And who made me a big success
And brought me wealth and fame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachev...
I am never forget the day my first book is published
Every chapter I stole from somewhere else
Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory
This book was sensational!
Pravda - well, Pravda - Pravda said:
Жил был король когда-то, При нем блоха жила
[Once upon a time there lived a king, and with him lived a flea.]
("It stinks")
But Izvestia! Izvestia said:
Я иду куда сам царь идет пешком
[Now I must go where even the Tzar goes on foot (i.e., the bathroom]
("It stinks")
Metro-Goldwyn Moskva buys the movie rights for six million rubles;
Changing title to 'The Eternal Triangle'
With Brigitte Bardot playing part of hypotenuse
And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name!
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