Mathematicians

The probable splashes against a woman's stockings which a moving motor car would make is something which members of the American Mathematical Society who met at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., last week could figure out--given among other factors the depth and viscosity of the puddle, the weight and speed of the car, the shape and inflation of the tire, the position and shape of the legs. They could calculate something harder than that from sufficient data--the whorling paths of cream as it pours into a breakfast cup of coffee, for example. Factors are what the mathematician asks for. He can describe more accurately than the man in the street or the academic scientist what will happen from combinations of those factors. A classic case: Albert Einstein's prediction of starlight bending.

More than mere factors the mathematician asks for constant factors. There are not many fundamental ones of them known in the universe. By definition man has taken as standards the atomic weight of oxygen, the length of a meter, the weight of a cubic centimeter of water, and four other items. From observation he has figured very closely the velocity of light, the drag of gravity, absolute zero (459.4 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit) and six others. By deduction there are seven derived constants, like the mass of the hydrogen atom, or of the electron. Then there are six experimental constants, and four conventional.

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