Futility Closet - 159-The Mozart of Mathematics

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from an empty essay to a web-footed marine. This is episode 159. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Mathematician Paul Erdish had no home, no job, and no hobbies. Instead, for 60 years, he wandered the world, staying with each of hundreds of collaborators just long enough to finish a project and then moving on. In today's

Starting point is 00:00:38 show, we'll meet the Mozart of mathematics, whose restless brilliance made him the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century. We'll also ponder Japanese cannibalism in World War II and puzzle over a senseless stabbing. We have a little news this week. There is finally a Futility Closet store, where you can purchase clothing, mugs, phone cases, and even pillowcases, all emblazoned with our delightful logo designed by Von Glitchka. This is your chance to show your love of the quirky and the curious, or maybe just of quirky and curious penguins. If you're interested, check it out at the store link on our website at futilitycloset.com, or see the link in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:01:22 A lot of people suggested this one. This is a story about a remarkable mathematician, but what makes him remarkable is not so much the math as the way he arranged his life. He discovered early that he loved doing mathematics, and he arranged his life so that he could spend literally almost all his time doing it. Paul Erdős had no home, no wife or children, no job, and no hobbies. He lived out of a suitcase and an orange plastic bag from a Budapest department store, moving from one university or research center to the next across four continents. He'd show up on the doorstep of a fellow mathematician, say, my brain is open,

Starting point is 00:01:55 and work for a day or two until either the host was exhausted or he got bored. In a career that spanned 60 years, he did mathematics in more than 25 different countries, becoming arguably the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century, and he did it with a cordial disregard for what the world thought of him or how he was choosing to live. In his obituary in 1996, The Economist wrote, Mr. Erdős simply constructed his life to extract the maximum amount of happiness. Paul Erdős was born in Budapest on March 26, 1913. Happily for a mathematical genius, his parents were both math teachers. But immediately there was a crisis. On the day he was

Starting point is 00:02:32 born, both of his sisters, ages three and five, died of scarlet fever. His mother, terrified that Paul would contract an illness himself, kept him home from school until high school. During his childhood, his mother worked long hours and his father was confined for six years in a Russian prisoner of war camp, so he passed the time flipping through their math books. He later said, I fell in love with numbers at a young age. They were my friends. I could depend on them to always be there and always behave in the same way. It was immediately clear that he was prodigiously gifted. As a toddler, he would look at the calendar and calculate how many days would pass before his mother would come home for the holidays. At age three, he could multiply three-digit numbers in his head. At four, he entertained himself by calculating how long a train would take to reach

Starting point is 00:03:13 the sun. And he used to ask his mother's friends how old they were and tell them how many seconds they had lived. When his father returned from Siberia, he taught Paul English, but this is interesting. He had learned it from books rather than from a native speaker, so he himself didn't know quite how to pronounce it. So as a result, Paul acquired this odd accent that he retained throughout his life. As I said, he stayed home until high school because his mother was afraid of contagion, and even then he attended only every other year because she kept changing her mind. But he did well enough to enter university at age 17 in Budapest, and he completed both an undergraduate degree and a PhD in math in four years.

Starting point is 00:03:49 During his first year, he caused a stir in Hungarian mathematical circles by proving Bertrand's postulate, which is a simple conjecture that had first been posed in 1845. I won't go into a lot of math here, but this is just a good example of the kind of problem that he liked. It's incredibly simple. Basically, you pick any number, say four, and double it. Here you'd get eight. The postulate says that between those two numbers, there'll be a prime number. So between four and eight, actually, we find that that's true. Seven is prime. The question is, is that always true? As you go up the number line, numbers get gigantically huge, but also prime numbers get more and more scarce as you go up there. Anyway, it turns out that this is true,

Starting point is 00:04:25 in fact, and the Russian mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshov had proved this in 1850. But his proof was cumbersome, and Erdős managed to find one that was both simple and beautiful. Nathan Fine came up with a rhyme to commemorate this. It goes, Chebyshov said it, and I say it again, there is always a prime between n and 2n. Erdős was only 18 when he did this, but the milestone characterized his mathematical work. He posed and solved problems that were beautiful and simple to understand, but notoriously difficult to solve. In 1934, disturbed by the rise of antisemitism in Hungary, he went to the University of Manchester in England for a postdoctoral fellowship, and from there he went on to Princeton in the United States in 1938. During the 1940s,

Starting point is 00:05:04 he simply wandered around among American universities, including Purdue, Stanford, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania, declining full-time job offers so that he'd have the freedom to work with anyone on anything at any time. And that began half a century of famous wandering. He had no home, no wife, and no job. In fact, throughout his career, he never had a permanent post and never even applied for one. Instead, he traveled endlessly among universities, research institutes, and mathematical friends, staying only long enough to collaborate on interesting work and then moving on.

Starting point is 00:05:35 From his 20s onward, he rarely slept in the same bed for seven nights in a row. His motto was, another roof, another proof. His friends came to call him Uncle Paul. For more than 60 years, he lived out of a half-full suitcase as a freelance mathematician, surviving on fees from lectures and appearances. And in fact, he gave away most of even this income because he just didn't need it. Béla Boulibas, another Hungarian mathematician, wrote, he was passionately, almost pathologically keen to be free, to do as he liked, when he liked. He hated to be alone,

Starting point is 00:06:03 and almost never was. He loved to attend conferences and enjoy the attention of mathematicians. And he became a sort of clearing house or warehouse of mathematical knowledge. He sent out 1,500 letters a year to collaborators around the world, and he could remember the status of his work with each one of them. Apparently, his memory was just prodigious. His cousin said once she saw him look up six telephone numbers, and then he talked to her for half an hour and then he used

Starting point is 00:06:27 all the phone numbers and remembered them correctly. She said that impressed her more than any of his scientific work. Right, because like if she's like me I can't remember

Starting point is 00:06:35 one phone number for five minutes. In the early 1950s he began putting out contracts on mathematical problems that he wasn't able to solve offering a cash reward

Starting point is 00:06:43 to anyone else who could do it. By 1987 the unclaimed rewards totaled $15,000 and raged from $10 to $3,000. In some sense, I think this odd way of living arose because of his unusual upbringing. He'd always relied on others to do things for him. He tied his shoes for the first time at age 11, and he was 21 when he buttered his first piece of bread. Seriously? Yeah. His mother buttered his first piece of bread. Seriously? Yeah. His mother buttered his bread for him?

Starting point is 00:07:07 Yeah, or a servant did. But now he relied on the mathematical community for his existence. He relied on friends to chauffeur him around. He didn't have a car, though he was a notorious backseat driver, and he showed no interest in art, fiction, movies, or sex. He had so few clothes that his hosts

Starting point is 00:07:22 would have to wash his socks and underwear several times a week. He could have bought more and learned to wash them himself, but he couldn't be bothered. He said, some French socialists said that private property was theft. I say that private property is a nuisance. He developed his own odd, whimsical names for things. He referred to a small child as an epsilon, which in math is just an arbitrarily small thing. A non-mathematician to him was a trivial being.

Starting point is 00:07:47 Giving a math lecture, he referred to as preaching. Women were bosses, men were slaves. To be married was to be captured. To divorce was to be liberated. And if you were remarried, you were recaptured. Alcohol was poison and music was noise. So wine, women, and song becomes poison, bosses, and noise. He referred to the United States as Sam and the Soviet Union as Joe.

Starting point is 00:08:12 And tellingly, I think, he referred to being born and dying as arriving and leaving, but ceasing to do mathematics was dying. He wasn't religious, but he had no animus against religion. He spent the 1953 academic year at the University of Notre Dame. He told his colleagues he'd enjoyed his time there, especially his discussions with the Dominicans, but he said, the only thing that bothers me, there are too many plus signs on the campus there. He referred to God half humorously as the SF or Supreme Fascist. The SF tormented Erdős by hiding his glasses, stealing his passport, refusing to share elegant solutions to math problems. He described his philosophy by saying, if you do something bad in life, the SF gets two points.

Starting point is 00:08:47 If you don't do something good that you should have done, the SF gets one point. You never score, so the SF always wins, but the game of life is to keep the SF score low. He said, the SF created us to enjoy our suffering. The sooner we die, the sooner we defy his plans. Erdős referred to this as just sort of half a joke, but his humor amassed a basically bitter worldview. Paul Hoffman, in the best book on Erdős, a book called The Man Who Loved Only Numbers,

Starting point is 00:09:14 says mathematics was his anchor in a world that he regarded as cruel and heartless, although he believed in the goodness and innocence of ordinary individuals. Bulebaus wrote, sadly, for much of his life he knew loneliness and sorrow, and he needed the constant stimulus of new mathematical companions and ideas to keep his unhappiness at bay. But for us mathematicians, this companionship was a treasured gift. He spoke about something that he called the book, which is an infinite book that contains the best proofs of all the mathematical theorems, proofs that are elegant and perfect. The highest compliment was to say that someone's work was straight from the book. He said, you don't have to believe in God, but you

Starting point is 00:09:47 should believe in the book. He said, mathematics is the surest way to immortality. If you make a big discovery in mathematics, you will be remembered after everyone else will be forgotten. And he once said, why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful? If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is. With 500 co-authors, Erdős collaborated with more people than any other mathematician in history, and that gave rise to an interesting tradition, I guess you'd call it, among mathematicians. One measure of a mathematician's eminence is what's called his Erdős number. Erdős himself has an Erdős number of zero, because he's Paul Erdős. The 500 people who have collaborated with him on some significant himself has an Erdős number of zero because he's Paul Erdős the 500 people who have collaborated with him on some significant

Starting point is 00:10:28 work have an Erdős number of one anyone who writes a number with one of those people has an Erdős number of two and so on this is somewhat like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon except it's in math the remarkable thing is very few living mathematicians have an Erdős number higher than five which is just sort of how to concentrate

Starting point is 00:10:44 the graph is the whole network which just sort of concentrated that graph as the whole network. He was sort of the sun in the middle of this whole system of other mathematicians. And he was so prolific that he could, you know, he had links to almost everyone else. Just incidentally here, Hank Aaron, the American baseball great and Erdős both signed the same baseball when Emory University gave them honorary degrees on the same day. So some people joke that if that counts as a joint publication, then Hank Aaron has an Erdős number of one. Unlike most mathematicians, Erdős seemed to retain all his powers as he got older,

Starting point is 00:11:14 something that even he joked about. In the last 25 years of his life, he worked 19-hour days fortified by Benzedrine and Ritalin. In 1979, his friend Ronald Graham bet him $500 that he couldn't give up amphetamines for a month. Erdős stayed off pills for 30 days, collected his winnings, and told Graham, you've showed me I'm not an addict, but I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month. He went back to taking pills, and his productivity returned. In 1970, he announced he was two and a half billion years old.

Starting point is 00:11:52 He explained that when he was young, the Earth was said to be two billion years old, and now they said it was four and a half billion years old. So he said, that makes me two and a half billion, which is hard to argue with. Shortly after this, he started adding the initials P-G-O-M after his name. He said that stood for Poor Great Old Man. When he turned 60, he changed this to P-G-O-M-L-D, where the L-D stood for Living Dead. At 65, he added A-D for Archaeological Discovery. At 70, he added L-D for Legally Dead. And at 75, he added C-D, which he said stands for Count Dead.

Starting point is 00:12:23 He explained that in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, when you turn 75, you can stay in the academy with full privileges, but you no longer count as a member. That's why he added the CD. He lived in this odd but gigantically productive way for 60 years and did math to the very end. He died of a heart attack only hours after presenting the solution to a difficult geometry problem at a conference in Warsaw. Paul Hoffman wrote, before Erdős died on September 20th, 1996, at the age of 83, he had managed to think about more problems than any other mathematician in history. He wrote or co-authored 1,500 academic papers, many of them monumental and all of them substantial. That's about five times as many as other prolific mathematicians. Even in his 70s, Erdős would often produce 50 published papers a year, more than many good mathematicians will produce in a lifetime. This titanic output made Erdős arguably the most

Starting point is 00:13:10 prolific mathematician in history, after Leonhard Euler, the great Swiss mathematician of the 18th century. Euler published more pages of math than Erdős did, but Erdős set a record for coming up with good problems and seeing that someone solved them. More than half of his 1,500 publications were joint, and they were often done with young co-authors who went on to distinguished careers. Many of them credited his early encouragement as a key to their success. And he posed countless new problems that mathematicians are still puzzling over today. Bolobos wrote that, as a source of problems, in the entire history of mathematics, there is nobody remotely like him. He has left behind hundreds of attractive problems that are easy to state, but that usually turn out to have pinpointed the heart of the matter. He once said, in a way, mathematics is the only infinite human activity.

Starting point is 00:13:52 It is conceivable that humanity could eventually learn everything in physics or biology, but humanity certainly won't ever be able to find out everything in mathematics because the subject is infinite. Numbers themselves are infinite. That's why mathematics is really my only interest. He had suggested the epitaph for himself, finally I am becoming stupider no more. In the preface to her book Erdős on Graphs, the University of California mathematician Fan Chung wrote, Paul had been doing exactly what he liked and wanted to do until the very last day of his life. Throughout the 83 years that he lived, he had been absolutely true to himself beyond any temptation of money and position. I miss Uncle Paul the most. In episode 156, Greg told the story of Japanese intelligence officer Hiro Onoda,

Starting point is 00:15:03 who fought World War II in the Philippines until 1974. Linda Hostetler wrote about the experiences of her father, who was stationed in the Pacific after the Japanese surrendered in World War II. Linda said, part of his job was convincing Japanese soldiers who, like Hiro Onoda, were embedded in the countryside, that the war was in fact over. He told me that most of the squadrons that were hiding in the countryside would not believe that Japan had surrendered until they saw it in a newspaper. My father's squad finally set up a printing press back at wherever their base was. When the demand was made to see the announcement in a newspaper, they simply printed a newspaper with the headlines about Japan surrendering and other news that would be in a newspaper. This worked to get most of the Japanese soldiers to surrender peacefully.

Starting point is 00:15:45 Obviously, it would not have worked with Hiro Onoda. Of course, the real lesson was that he was partly right. American forces did use mild trickery to avoid combat and resolve the situation. And that's interesting to hear, but I'm not aware of any occasions when the Americans actually tried to convince the Japanese that the war with them was over when it wasn't. Though that would be an interesting military tactic. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if anybody actually thought of that. I mean, apparently the Japanese troops were warned it might happen, but I don't know if anybody actually ever tried doing that. No.

Starting point is 00:16:17 That's interesting, too, that I wasn't aware that we were printing up newspapers, because that's what he thought. If you read Onoda's book, he suspected any time he saw an actual newspaper with a story saying the war was over, he just assumed it was fake. And I thought, that's outlandish. But apparently we really weren't doing that. Daniel Sturman had some interesting questions about Onoda's story. The story of hero Onoda was absolutely fascinating, but can I trouble you to do a follow-up? I'm very curious about the other side of the story, that of the people searching for him. You mentioned offhandedly that Onodo

Starting point is 00:16:49 was declared dead in the 1950s, so why did they continue searching for him, and by name? How did they know precisely how many soldiers were still hiding on Lubang, and which ones they were? What was going through the minds of his family members each time they came to Lubang to search for him? Keep up the wonderful work. I often tell my wife stories from your podcast. She doesn't listen to it herself, not being a native English speaker, and this one even enthralled my five-year-old. We are always impressed to find out that there are kids who like our show. Good to know that we have another generation of listeners growing up. As for Daniel's questions, the materials that we've been able to find really do focus almost exclusively on Onoda's side of the story,

Starting point is 00:17:30 so we don't have answers to any of these really excellent questions. So if any of our listeners who live in Japan or who read Japanese want to dig into this, we'd really be glad to hear what you can find out. Yeah, I would think, yeah, it must have been heartbreaking for his family, and it must have been a big story, I would think, in Japan, even if they never had succeeded in retrieving any of those soldiers, just the knowledge that they were out there would have been a really important story. Right. Although, as Daniel says, how did they know they were out there? How did they know for sure? Or at least, maybe not for sure, but have a good idea? Yeah, I'm sure there's a whole story there. I was surprised in doing the research that, you're right, nobody touches on that in the West.

Starting point is 00:18:10 And the next email brings up a topic that is a little on the gruesome side. So if anyone is feeling squeamish or listening with tender-eared youngsters, you may want to skip ahead a couple of minutes. After episode 156, Reed Savory wrote that an ancestor of his founded and was colonial governor for the Bonin Islands. Reed said, this is also known as Chichijima and

Starting point is 00:18:32 was where George H.W. Bush was shot down during World War II. Probably more relevant to this week's episode, however, it was also the site of some pretty horrific war crimes during World War II. Nothing on the scale of what the Nazis did in Europe, of course, but Japanese senior officers who occupied the islands during the war were tried and convicted of cannibalism, literally consuming American servicemen as prime cuts of meat, including some people who were apparently butchered while still alive. Some of the victims were apparently even members of Bush's flight group. It's covered all over the place if you look in Google, but for a primary source, it's also in a book called Flyboys by James Bradley, which was a bestseller some years back. And Greg and I hadn't heard about this aspect of World War II, but in his book,

Starting point is 00:19:19 Bradley contends that there were numerous acts of cannibalism in the Japanese army during the war. The incident involving George H.W. Bush's narrow escape occurred on Chichijima, one of the Bonin or Agasawara Islands, which are about 600 miles or 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo. In September 1944, Bush was one of the pilots of an air mission against Japanese installations on Chichijima. Despite his plane being hit and the engine catching on fire, Bush was able to complete his attack and fly several miles away, where he parachuted out of his plane over the ocean. He found an inflatable raft that had been dropped

Starting point is 00:19:56 by another plane, and despite being injured, he frantically tried to paddle it away from Chichijima with his hands until he was finally rescued by an American submarine. It was a rather harrowing experience for Bush, but as detailed in Bradley's book, eight other flyboys were a lot less lucky, as they were captured by the Japanese, tortured, and executed, and then at least some of them were partially eaten by some rather drunk Japanese senior officers who apparently believed that eating the flesh of your enemies demonstrated good fighting spirit and would confer health benefits. While this incident was fairly shocking when it became known, Bradley says that most of the cannibalism that occurred during World War II was actually due to the fact that some of the Japanese troops were quite literally starving. Troops sent to New Guinea, for example, were not

Starting point is 00:20:44 sent with anywhere near sufficient supplies, and when the shipping lines were cut by the American Navy, the stranded troops were basically written off. Bradley says that of the over 150,000 Japanese sent to New Guinea during the war, only about 10,000 survived, with the vast majority dying of disease and starvation. In order to try to survive, the Japanese would harvest the bodies of dead Allied soldiers or eat prisoners captured from the Allies or local populations. When there were no non-Japanese available, they would draw lots among themselves for who would be sacrificed to feed the others. As Reid mentioned, one of the most horrific aspects was that in some places,

Starting point is 00:21:23 the victims were not killed outright. Because of the lack of refrigeration, flesh would that in some places the victims were not killed outright. Because of the lack of refrigeration, flesh would spoil very quickly in the tropical climate. So some external parts of a victim would be cut off to provide one meal, and then the victim would be allowed to die slowly so as to keep the internal organs edible for a later meal. I didn't know anything about that. No, I hadn't heard anything about that at all either. That was kind of news to both of us also it sounds like bush i mean it was almost a miracle that he that fate didn't

Starting point is 00:21:51 befall him too you know yes yes i i saw uh some contend that he uh he was the only member of that entire flight mission to have survived and he actually only survived by a combination of just like absolute good luck and some really quick decision making on his part that all worked out for him. And he was the only one. Yeah. I wonder what he felt when he heard later what had happened to. Yeah. And just felt ever after, you know, for the rest of your life after after a close call like that.

Starting point is 00:22:21 Yeah. We sometimes hear from some of our listeners when the shows start tending to get pretty dark. So I'm going to end this segment on a definitely lighter note. Anything would have to be lighter than that, right? Makeda wrote to us, I am a student worker at the New College of Florida stuffing envelopes for hours at a time and your podcast makes it bearable. I first heard about your podcast on No Such Thing as a Fish and I am really glad I started listening to it. My school is pretty small and really great and the student constitution has such gems as students shall have the right to own a dinosaur. However, any student wishing to raise velociraptors must reside either off campus

Starting point is 00:23:00 or in bee dorm. Thought that would make you laugh and thanks again for helping me get through my job. So thanks, Makeda, and we hope your envelope stuffing is going well today. And that is very farsighted of your school to deal with thorny velociraptor issues right up front like that, though it does make me wonder what B-Dorm is like. Thanks also to everyone who writes in to us,

Starting point is 00:23:23 and if you would like to do so yourself, you can send any questions or comments to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to present me with an odd sounding situation and I have to try to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Waldo van der Vals. A man traveled to another country and stabbed a man to death in front of his home. The two had never met and the murderer had no criminal history. Why did he do it? Okay.

Starting point is 00:24:01 Did this actually happen? Yes. Is the real story? Okay. Is the time period important? Not particularly. Not particularly. Is the specific country involved important? No.

Starting point is 00:24:16 No. Okay. Was he paid to kill this man? No. No. So this wasn't part of his job, legal or otherwise? That's right. So he stabbed a man to death. Are you using that a bit metaphorically, like he was a surgeon and he cut the man? No, got to check everything, but no, he just... Like stabbed him with a knife, intending to kill him? Yes. And they're both human men?

Starting point is 00:24:37 Yes. Okay. So a man traveled from one country to another country and stabbed a second man to death in front of the second man's home? Yes. And I have to figure out why he did this. And you're saying the time period isn't particularly important. No. Is religion involved? No.

Starting point is 00:25:02 And you're saying it doesn't matter what countries we're specifically dealing in? That's right. That's right. Okay. Is it, I guess, is it important, the specific identities of either man? Specific identities mean like their names? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:19 No. Who they specifically are. Okay. Did they have any kind of relationship with each other? Prior relationship with each other? Prior relationship with each other? I'm going to say no. Did the first man travel to the other country specifically with the intention of seeking out and stabbing somebody? Yes.

Starting point is 00:25:37 Seeking out and stabbing this particular person? Yes. Okay. And you're saying this is real. This isn't a fictional event. That's right. Okay. And you're saying this is real. This isn't a fictional event. That's right. Okay. So he particularly traveled deliberately.

Starting point is 00:25:55 Is the fact that he stabbed him important as opposed to using another weapon? No. Okay. So his goal was specifically to murder this person? Yeah. This specific person. Did he specifically want to do it in front of the man's house? Not specifically, no.

Starting point is 00:26:07 Okay. And by man's house, you mean the man's residence? Right. Okay. So he just wanted this other man dead? Yes. Okay. Are there other people involved that I need to know about?

Starting point is 00:26:16 Yes. Okay. Romantic partners? Yes. The wife of one of the men? Yes. The wife of the murderer? No. The wife of the... Oh, wait. Sorry. Yes. The wife of one of the men? Yes. The wife of the murderer? No.

Starting point is 00:26:28 The wife of the... Oh, wait. Sorry. Yes. The wife of the murderer. Man A. Man 1. Yes. The first man.

Starting point is 00:26:33 Okay. We'll call the murderer man the first man. Man 1. Yes. Okay. His wife is involved somehow. Yes. Other people that I need to know about?

Starting point is 00:26:42 Yes. The wife of the second man no children yes okay the murderer's children man one's children yes or children he believed to be his that weren't his no no his children his children so okay did the man that he murdered, had he somehow wronged or injured man one's wife and children? Yes. Had he murdered man one's wife and children or killed? Not murdered. Not murdered, but killed them in some way?

Starting point is 00:27:16 Yes. Or caused them to be killed? Yes. Is that more accurate? Yes. Is man two's, the dead man's job important? Yes. Is he a political figure?

Starting point is 00:27:27 No. Is he in the medical profession? No. So how else did he cause, does he have an occupation such as like a pilot or a train driver or bus driver? Something close to that, yes. Something close to that. So. Something close to that.

Starting point is 00:27:45 So like, had there been an accident? Yes. So had more people died than just man one's wife and children? Yes. Okay, but man one was blaming man two for the deaths. That's right. And man, something along the lines of an accident

Starting point is 00:28:02 had occurred while man two was performing his job. Yes. Okay. You're doing fine. So a ship captain? No. Is it transportation involved? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:13 Okay. Okay. So I've already said planes, trains, buses, and ships, and you've said no to all of those, right? No. Should I back up and say them all individually? Did I just name one of them? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Why don't you back up? Planes all individually did i just yeah why don't you back up planes planes are involved planes are involved other forms of transportation plus planes no just planes yes but he wasn't a pilot that's right oh had he um i don't know performed maintenance work or built no but you're very close uh He designed the plane? No. Was there some sort of discrimination involved? Like, I don't know, like certain people were forced to take different transportation or sit different places in a plane or anything because of discrimination. Okay. That'd be a good puzzle, though. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:00 Okay, so Man 2 was somehow involved in a plane that was in an accident. Was involved in some way with a plane that had been in an accident. Yes. Would you say that Man 2 had somehow caused the accident? Man 1 would say that Man 2 had caused the accident. Had Man 2 been doing something? At the time that the plane had the accident, had Man 2 been doing something that could have been considered to be causing the

Starting point is 00:29:26 accident, as opposed to something he had done in the past? He was currently doing an action, he was performing a verb. Yes. Okay, at the time of the accident. Yeah. But he wasn't flying the plane. That's right. You're as close as you can be. He was flying a drone or had a bird or something that caused the plane to be in an accident? No. No. Was man two on the ground? Yes. At the time that the plane had the accident?

Starting point is 00:29:50 Yes. Was he involved in like being a flight controller or something like that? Yes, basically he got a, that's basically, he was an air traffic controller. And he didn't, man one thought he hadn't done his job properly. Yes. The murder was Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect. The man he killed was Peter Nielsen, a Swiss air traffic controller who had been on duty when two airliners collided over Überlingen, Germany, in July 2002, killing Kaloyev's wife and two children. Nielsen was absolved of any responsibility and retired.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Kaloyev traveled to the Swiss town of Kloten and stabbed him to death. The disaster had undone him completely. He told a judge that it had ended his life. He said, I have been living in the cemetery for almost two years sitting behind their graves. Oh, that's really sad. He'd hired a Moscow private investigator to find Nielsen's address outside Zurich. Kaliyev said, apparently he did not expect that he would have to answer for the results of his work. He murmured something to me.

Starting point is 00:30:39 Then I showed him some pictures of my children and said, they were my children. What would you feel if you saw your children in coffins? He said he didn't remember the stabbing itself, but couldn't explain why he brought a knife if his motives were peaceful. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to eight years in prison. Interestingly, though, on his release, he was met by a supportive crowd at the airport and was appointed deputy minister of housing for his city. So a lot of people agreed with him. Oh, no. Well, it's kind of hard to approve somebody doing that, you know. Yeah, but it just

Starting point is 00:31:09 ended his life, the accident. Yeah, I mean, I'm sympathetic, but we don't advocate that anybody go to a new... Yeah, murder our traffic controllers. Murder our traffic controllers for any reason.

Starting point is 00:31:19 So thank you, Paula, for sending that in. Thank you, yes. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Thanks so much to everyone who has been supporting Futility Closet,

Starting point is 00:31:33 either through Patreon or donations. And now, if you find yourself hankering for an apron or a dog bandana, sporting a penguin in a top hat, you have a new way to support us through our store. You can find links for all of that on our website at futilitycloset.com. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website where you can sample more than 9,000 beguiling crumlets. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast with the links and references

Starting point is 00:32:01 for the topics in today's show. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's exceptionally talented brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 159-The Mozart of Mathematics

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