50 YEARS AGO

Life, the Great Adventure. By Jean Rostand. (Discussions with Paul Bodin.) — An admirable guide for those who wish to explore some of the broader paths in the field of current biology... With Rostand's general point of view few modern readers would quarrel, although his explanation of reasons for superfluous hair in the male is nonsense... These, however, are trivial criticisms of a book which could reach many readers. Many of them will be shocked to learn that... in a country like France, whose people are so proud of their ability to behave rationally, there are still about 3,460 astrologer-palmists in Paris alone... One of the lessons from this book is that the mass of people are still prepared to believe anything, particularly if the new cult is served persuasively with the right amount of scientific jargon. Rostand and Bodin deserve praise for their efforts to remove some of the superstitions of 1955.

From Nature 20 August 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

The Academy directs attention to a curious poetical tribute — composed by a French mathematician — to Archimedes, referring to the evaluation of π, which, set out in thirty places of decimals, is 3.141592653589793238462643383279. It will be observed that each of the thirty-one words in this quatrain contains the number of letters corresponding with the successive numbers in the numerical expression:— Que j'aime à faire apprendre un nombre utile aux sages/Immortel Archimède, artiste ingénieur!/Qui de ton jugement peut priser la valeur?/Pour moi ton problème eut de pareils avantages.

The Frankfurter Zeitung... adds a similar effort emanating from a German poet and geometrician:— Dir, o Held, o alter Philosoph, Du Riesen-Genie!/Wie viele Tausende bewundern Geister/himmlisch wie Du und göttlich!/Noch reiner in Aeonen/wird das uns strahlen/wie im lichten Morgenrot!

The Academy asks for English parallels to these efforts.

From Nature 17 August 1905.