Scottish Book

Part of the Scottish Book with Banach's and Ulam's notes.

The Scottish Book (Polish: Księga Szkocka) was a thick notebook used by mathematicians of the Lwow School of Mathematics for jotting down problems meant to be solved. The notebook was named so after the Scottish Café where it was kept.

Originally, the mathematicians who gathered at the cafe would write down the problems and equations directly on the cafe's marble table tops, but these would be erased at the end of each day, and so the record of the preceding discussions would be lost. The idea for the book was most likely originally suggested by Stefan Banach, or his wife, who purchased a large notebook and left it with the proprietor of the cafe.

Problems contributed by individual authors

A total of 193 problems were written down in the book.

Stanisław Mazur contributed a total of 43 problems, 24 of them as a single author and 19 together with Stefan Banach. Banach himself wrote 14, plus another 11 with Stanislaw Ulam and Mazur. Ulam wrote 40 problems and additional 15 ones with others.

During the Soviet occupation of Lwów, several Russian mathematicians visited the city and also added problems to the book.

Hugo Steinhaus contributed the last one in May 1941 (other sources give March, 1941), which involved a question about the likely distribution of matches within a matchbox - a problem motivated by Banach's habit of chain smoking cigarettes - shortly before the German attack on the Soviet Union.

Continuity

The building of the Scottish cafe where the book was recorded and stored. Now, a bank.

After World War II, an English translation annotated by Ulam was published by Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1957.

After World War II, Steinhaus, now at the University of Wrocław revived the tradition of the Scottish book by initiating The New Scottish Book.

References

• Mauldin, R. Daniel, ed. (1981), The Scottish Book, Boston, MA: Birkhäuser Boston, ISBN 978-3-7643-3045-3, MR 0666400
• Ulam, Stan, ed. (1958), The Scottish book (PDF), English version of Scottish book

External links

• Scottish book preface