“Professor Thomson will not meet his lasses today.”
When the class assembled the next day in anticipation of the effect of their joke, they were astonished and chagrined to find that the professor had outwitted them. The legend of yesterday was now found to read,—
“Professor Thomson will not meet his asses today.” [9]
—Northrup, Cyrus.
University of Washington Address, November 2, 1908.
[1049]. One morning a great noise proceeded from one of the classrooms [of the Braunsberger gymnasium] and on investigation it was found that Weierstrass, who was to give the recitation, had not appeared. The director went in person to Weierstrass’ dwelling and on knocking was told to come in. There sat Weierstrass by a glimmering lamp in a darkened room though it was daylight outside. He had worked the night through and had not noticed the approach of daylight. When the director reminded him of the noisy throng of students who were waiting for him, his only reply was that he could impossibly interrupt his work; that he was about to make an important discovery which would attract attention in scientific circles.—Lampe, E.
Karl Weierstrass: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, Bd. 6 (1897), pp. 38-39.
[1050]. Weierstrass related ... that he followed Sylvester’s papers on the theory of algebraic forms very attentively until Sylvester began to employ Hebrew characters. That was more than he could stand and after that he quit him.—Lampe, E.
Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau, Bd. 12 (1897), p. 361.