From: isexiem@leonis.nus.sg (Xie Min) Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.engr,sci.research.careers,sci.research.postdoc,sci.math Subject: WORLD PUBLICATION RECORDS Date: 18 Jun 1998 01:48:05 GMT I am actually looking for various "world records" of published papers. Please let me know if you have any information regarding the following. All papers have to be published and related things clearly documented. Shortest journal paper Longest journal paper Paper with longest waiting time Paper with most references (what more?) Just a sample - PAPER WITH MOST AUTHORS? Measurement of the differential cross section for events with large total transverse energy in p(p)over-bar collisions at root s=1.8 TeV Abe F, Akimoto H, Akopian A, Albrow MG, Amadon A, Amendolia SR, Amidei D, Antos J, Aota S, Apollinari G, Arisawa T, Asakawa T, Ashmanskas W, Atac M, Azzi-Bacchetta P, Bacchetta N, Bagdasarov S, Bailey MW, de Barbaro P, Barbaro-Galtieri A, Barnes VE, Barnett BA, Barone M, Bauer G, Baumann T, Bedeschi F, Behrends S, Belforte S, Bellettini G, Bellinger J, Benjamin D, Bensinger J, Beretvas A, Berge JP, Berryhill J, Bertolucci S, Bettelli S, Bevensee B, Bhatti A, Biery K, Bigongiari C, Binkley M, Bisello D, Blair RE, Blocker C, Blusk S, Bodek A, Bokhari W, Bolla G, Bonushkin Y, Bortoletto D, Boudreau J, Breccia L, Bromberg C, Bruner N, Brunetti R, Buckley-Geer E, Budd HS, Burkett K, Busetto G, Byon-Wagner A, Byrum KL, Campbell M, Caner A, Carithers W, Carlsmith D, Cassada J, Castro A, Cauz D, Cerri A, Chang PS, Chang PT, Chao HY, Chapman J, Cheng MT, Chertok M, Chiarelli G, Chiou CN, Chlebana F, Christofek L, Chu ML, Cihangir S, Clark AG, Cobal M, Cocca E, Contreras M, Conway J, Cooper J, Cordelli M, Costanzo D, Couyoumtzelis C, Cronin-Hennessy D, Culbertson R, (names starting with D-Z omitted) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 80: (16) 3461-3466 APR 20 1998 G. A. Edgar (edgar@math.ohio-state.edu) wrote: : In article <6m79h1$q34$1@nuscc.nus.edu.sg>, isexiem@leonis.nus.sg (Xie Min) : wrote: : > What is that maximum waiting time for an article to be acecpted? : > : > If you know of any article that was accepted after many years : > since it was received, please let me know of the reference. The : > dates have to be clearly stated in the paper. : > : > : The longest time in my case cannot be documented, because Advances in Math : conveniently does not publish submission or acceptance dates. : I remember attending a lecture by a Chinese mathematician : (Hwa Loo-Keng?). At one point he described a paper where acceptance : and publication were on opposite sides of the Cultural Revolution. (Perhaps : 15 years apart?) : -- : Gerald A. Edgar edgar@math.ohio-state.edu -- ============================================================================== From: "John Lowry" Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,sci.research.postdoc,sci.math Subject: Re: WORLD PUBLICATION RECORDS Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 21:38:19 -0600 Dear Xie Min and All: I understand that R.L. Moore, the point set theorist at the Univ. of Texas at Austin (from whom I took a couple of courses) once had a PhD student whose dissertation was only one page long. Finally got it through the system, too, as I heard. Unfortunately, Moore's dead and I don't have any details. John. John T. Lowry, PhD Flight Physics; Box 20919; Billings MT 59104 Voice: 406-248-2606; E-mail: jlowry@mcn.net [quote of previous post deleted -- djr] ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 21:36:25 -0800 From: Rich Lemert Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,sci.research.postdoc,sci.math Subject: Re: WORLD PUBLICATION RECORDS Several years ago, the History of Chemistry division of the American Chemical Society sponsored a symposium on 'interesting' chemical publication trivia and the like. As part of it, the Chemical Abstracts service included tidbits from their files like "the compound containing the most different elements" and "molecules that look like living creatures". A couple of the items I recall (I saw it over ten years ago) were "the paper with the most authors with the same last name" (five authors named xxxx Patel - who happened to work at the Patel Institute in India) and "a conference paper presented in a 'travelling blues' style". (For those unfamiliar with it, this is a musical style invented in America.) I happened to see this material when it was presented as a travelling poster exhibition passing through the Univ. of Texas while I was a grad student there. You might contact the ACS (and the History of Chemistry division) to see if this was ever collected and archived anywhere. Rich Lemert [deletia] ============================================================================== From: rusin@vesuvius.math.niu.edu (Dave Rusin) Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,sci.research.postdoc,sci.math Subject: Re: WORLD PUBLICATION RECORDS Date: 18 Jun 1998 07:25:52 GMT In article <6m9rkl$ns$1@nuscc.nus.edu.sg>, Xie Min wrote: >I am actually looking for various "world records" of published papers. > >Shortest journal paper >Longest journal paper >Paper with longest waiting time >Paper with most references This can be fun, but keep in mind that the definitions, particularly in extreme cases, can get clouded. For example, is the Lecture Notes in Mathematics series a journal? Several of its issues are quite large. John Thompson's classification of minimal finite simple groups was broken up into 6 pieces for publication in Pacific Journal. (The Odd Order Theorem -- a 7-word theorem with a 253-page proof -- was previously accorded the entire issue of the Pacific Journal.) Math of Computation used to distribute microfiche attachments with some of its papers -- do those computer prinouts count too? And, of course, there are the papers which only _seem_ long when you're reading them... Papers with short review time are common; if the editor is well aware of what you're doing, and maybe even helped with some of the arguments, s/he could accept the paper upon receipt. Publication time is now also nearly zero with electronic journals. (Brief pause for laughter.) At the other extreme, I note that (according to Math Reviews) Isaac Newton is still publishing. (Well, OK, it's his letters, and reprints of previously-appeared material.) I suspect Erdos (RIP 1996) will continue submitting papers in exactly his previous method for a few years yet, unless there is greater scrutiny regarding his alleged coauthorship. For short papers we may make some pretty precise rules for the game, as the attached old post indicates. A few stellar articles and their reviews were also highlighted recently in a Notices Amer Math Soc article (*) about Mathematical Reviews. dave (*) The phrase "fills a much-needed gap" evidently does _not_ actually appear in MathReviews. But many instances -- evidently unintentional -- showed up in a web search! ============================================================================== Newsgroup: sci.math From: ROLLER@alf2.ngate.uni-regensburg.de (MARTIN ROLLER t2991) Subject: Short Papers Date: 5 Jul 1994 10:28:13 GMT Some time ago I wrote: > Shortest Mathematical Publication > > We all have seen one page papers. But what is the shortest > mathematical publication ever? To find that out I would like > to conduct a little poll amongst sci.math readers. > > To have some rules, I declare that a mathematical paper must > > 1) contain at least one theorem and one proof, and > 2) be reviewed in Math Reviews as a separate paper > (not just mentioned as one of a collection). > > The length of the paper will be determined by the number of > lines (including titel and references) of the original > publication. > > Please mail me, Martin.Roller@mathematik.uni-regensburg.de, > your suggestions, containing a reference, MR number and line > count. The results of the poll will be posted to sci.math in > the first week of July 1994. Here are your answers (followed by number of lines and proposer): E. Nelson: A Proof of Liouville's Theorem, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 12 (1961) 995; MR 41#3791. (12, G.A. Edgar) P.H. Doyle: Plane Separation, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 64 (1968) 291; MR 36#7115. (13, M. Roller) H. Furstenberg: On the Infinitude of Primes, Amer. Math. Monthly 62 (1955) 353; MR 16-904. (14, J-N Oliveira Silva) D. Lubell: A Short Proof of Sperner's Lemma, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A, vol.1 no. 2 (1966) 299; MR 33#2558. (16, T. Chow) Some people critisized the choice of line number as a measure of length, with which I can't but agree. So if you'd rather count words or letters, you're welcome to do so. The point of this collection, though, is that these short papers are wonderful: surprising, elegant, lucid. Much more amusing, IMHO, than jokes about taxi numbers or exam papers. F. Voloch pointed out the following review A. Schinzel: Review of a paper by Hyyro, Zentralblatt fuer Math. 137 (1967) 257-258, which contains a theorem and a proof, improving the reviewed result. How's that for a trivia question? --------------------------------------------------- Martin Roller, Mathematik, . Tel +49 941 943 2991 Universitaet Regensburg, . Fax +49 941 943 2576 93040 Regensburg, Germany . email Martin.Roller@mathematik.uni-regensburg.de ============================================================================== From: mckay@cs.concordia.ca (MCKAY john) Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,sci.research.postdoc,sci.math Subject: Re: WORLD PUBLICATION RECORDS Date: 18 Jun 1998 23:26:58 GMT In article <358987CE.3AE5@jimc.demon.co.uk> Adrian Cable writes: and gets it wrong! >Xie Min wrote: >> >> I am actually looking for various "world records" of published papers. >> Please let me know if you have any information regarding the following. >> All papers have to be published and related things clearly documented. >> >> Shortest journal paper >> Longest journal paper >> Paper with longest waiting time >> Paper with most references > >Well, this isn't a record really, but it is amusing. If I recall >correctly, Feynman once co-authored a paper with Ralph Alpher and Hans >Bethe, but down to Feynman's sense of humour, he also put down the name >of another physicist called Gamma (sp?) on the co-author list. As a >result, it became known as the alpha beta gamma paper. > >I recall this quite vaguely in the back of my mind - can anyone confirm >this more exactly? > >Thanks, cheers, Adrian Cable. I believe you will find the joker was Gamow. Read his (auto)biography. -- But leave the wise to wrangle, and with me the quarrel of the universe let be; and, in some corner of the hubbub couched, make game of that which makes as much of thee. ============================================================================== Taken from: http://www.improbable.com mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR") Issue Number 1998-09 September, 1998 ISSN 1076-500X Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the [deletia] 1998-09-08 Multiplicity of Monickers Last month we wondered what is the most number of co-authors (of a single research paper) with the same family name. Here is a partial answer. LIN, LIN, LIN "Computer search for binary cyclic UEP codes of odd length up to 65," Mao-Chao Lin, Chi-Chang Lin, and Shu Lin, "IEEE Transactions on Information Theory," vol. 36, July 1990, vol.36, no.4, pp. 924- 35. (Thanks to Vivek K Goyal for bringing this to our attention.) SEKULER, SEKULER, SEKULER "How the visual system detects changes in the direction of moving targets," Allison B. Sekuler, Robert Sekuler, and Erica B. Sekuler, "Perception," vol. 19, 1990, pp. 181-196. (Thanks to Robert Sekular, who writes, "People who know us (father and two daughters) refer to this paper as Sekuler-cubed. I'm still trying to figure out if that's good or bad.") ALVAREZ-BUYLLA, ALVAREZ-BUYLLA, ALVAREZ-BUYLLA "Pituitary and adrenals are required for hyperglycemic reflex initiated by stimulation of CBR with cyanide," R. Alvarez-Buylla, E. Alvarez-Buylla, H. Mendoza, S.A. Montero, and A. Alvarez- Buylla, "American Journal of Physiology, vol. 272 (1 Pt 2), Jan 1997, pp. 392-9. (Thanks to Philippe Rousselot for bringing this to our attention.) HASENFRATZ, HASENFRATZ, HASENFRATZ "Generalized roughening transition and its effect on the string tension," Anna Hasenfratz, Etelka Hasenfratz, Peter Hasenfratz, "Nuclear Physics B," vol. 180, 1981, p. 353. (Thanks to Gernot Muenster for bringing this to our attention.) LEE, LEE, LEE, LEE, LEE, KIM, KIM, KIM "A 32-Bank 1Gb Self-Strobing Synchronous DRAM with 1-GByte/s Bandwidth," J.-H Yoo, C.-H Kim, K.-C Lee, K.-H Kyung, S.-M Yoo, J.-H Lee, M.-H Son, J.-M Han, B.-M Kang, E. Haq, S.-B Lee, H.-H Sim, J.-H Kim, B.-S Moon, K.-Y Kim, J.-G Park, K.-P Lee, K.-Y Lee, K.-N Kim, S.-I Cho, J.-W Park, and H.-K Lim, "IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits," vol 31, no 11, Nov. 1996. (Thanks to Mike Palmer for bringing this to our attention.) More next month. ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 12:17:38 -0500 To: rusin@math.niu.edu From: sfinch@mathsoft.com (Steven Finch) Subject: MR trivia question [deletia --- djr] This fact about R. A. Rankin is from Ilan Vardi (who in turn heard about it from Mohan Nair): Have a look at the paper (which Rankin wrote in Gaelic): Rob Alasdair MacFhraing, "The number of Fionn's and Dubhan's men, and the story of Josephus and the forty Jews," (Gaelic. English summary) Proc. Royal Irish Acad. Sect. A #52 (1948), 87--93. Interestingly, this paper was reviewed in Mathematical Reviews by Rankin himself! He was the only person who listed Gaelic as one of his other languages, and they didn't realize that he had written the article using his Gaelic name. Here's my trivia question. In the history of MR, has anyone else ever reviewed their own paper? [deletia --- djr] ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:15:50 -0800 From: Louise Addis Subject: Re: Order of Authors in Publications Sender: "Archive of slapam-l (PAMnet)" Comments: To: SLAPAM-L@lists.yale.edu [Thread was, "How do authors determine the order of names?" -- djr] The other popular order for authors on large particle physics experimental collaborations is alphabetical by institution and then by author within each institution. (This is the order which we really prefer for the SPIRES-HEP database in case a coordinating author ever asks you!) As a matter of passing interest, the current record for number of authors on one paper is now 1677: the ATLAS collaboration at CERN which incidently uses the above mentioned order (so far). Louise Addis (for the SLAC SPIRES-HEP database) http://www.slac.stanford.edu/find/hep ============================================================================== From: NoJunkMail@this.address (Gerry Myerson) Newsgroups: sci.math Subject: Name that mathematician (was Re: Grothendieck memoirs in English?) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 12:25:45 +1100 In article <6chhm3$obm$1@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) wrote: => (There's a finite field specialist, I => think emeritus at Duke, still going strong as of a few years ago, with => over 700 papers whose name escapes me.) Carlitz. Gerry Myerson (gerry@mpce.mq.edu.au) ============================================================================== [Other prolific mathematicians: Euler; Erdos; Shelah --djr] ============================================================================== [Note that a paper by Erdos was reproduced _in its entirety_ in Mathematical Reviews! --djr] 7,164b 48.0X Erdös, Paul Integral distances. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 51, (1945). 996. The paper reads as follows. "In a note under the same title [see the preceding review] it was shown that there does not exist in the plane an infinite set of noncollinear points with all mutual distances integral. "It is possible to give a shorter proof of the following generalization: if $A,B,C$ are three points not in line and $k=[\max\,(AB,BC)]$, then there are at most $4(k+1)\sp 2$ points $P$ such that $PA-PB$ and $PB-PC$ are integral. For $\vert PA-PB\vert $ is at most $AB$ and therefore assumes one of the values $0,1,\cdots,k$, that is, $P$ lies on one of $k+1$ hyperbolas. Similarly $P$ lies on one of the $k+1$ hyperbolas determined by $B$ and $C$. These (distinct) hyperbolas intersect in at most $4(k+1)\sp 2$ points. An analogous theorem clearly holds for higher dimensions." Reviewed by I. Kaplansky © Copyright American Mathematical Society 2000