2006-03-22 Life

Lovely anecdote about the famously absent-minded Norbert Wiener:

"After several years teaching at MIT, the Wieners moved to a larger house. Knowing it would be in her husband's nature to forget where he now lived after work, Mrs. Wiener wrote down the address of the new house on a piece of paper and made him put it in his shirt pocket.

"At lunchtime, an inspiring idea came to the professor, who proceeded to pull out the paper and scribble down calculations, and to subsequently proceed to find a flaw, and to subsequently proceed to throw the paper away in disgust. At the end of the day, it occurred to Wiener that he had thrown away his address. He now had no idea where his home was.

"Putting his mind to work, he concocted a plan: go to his old home and wait to be rescued. Surely Margaret would realize he was lost and come to pick him up. When he arrived at the house, there was a little girl standing out front.

"'Excuse me, little girl,' he asked, 'would you happen to know where the people who used to live here moved to?' 'It's okay, Daddy,' the girl replied, 'Mommy sent me to get you.'"

(Decades later, Norbert Wiener's daughter was tracked down by a mathematics newsletter. She denied he forgot who she was.)

(from Wikipedia)

File under: Apocrypha ;-)