Lostmahauser's Conjecture
Here is the fateful picture of Meldreth Lostmahauser, which finally exposed him as a fake theoretical physicist.
Born in 1938, Lostmahauser grew up in an era of quantum mechanics that was in disarray. No really significant advances had been made in the field since the 1920s, and the physics world was metaphorically twiddling its thumbs, waiting for someone to come up with something.
Anything really.
One day at school, Lostmahauser drew a game of tic-tac-toe on the blackboard. His illegibility and the myopia of the incoming science teacher, who proclaimed it as a significant work, gave Lostmahauser an idea. In a field of work already full of terms such "charm", "strangeness" and "truth" and beauty", he thought he could put a new spin on it.
Over the years, he found that by taking a block of equations from different photographs of leading pioneers, and assembling them in a hodge-podge way using his inimitable illegible style for his own photos, his reputation grew.
It wasn't long before he made up a few words to use, such as "nervayance", "consanguinity" and "polt", and these came into common parlance, often used in theoretical physics today.
This photo, however, was his undoing, when it was shown at a conference of world leading physicists in Berne, 1994.
All eyes were on the equations on the blackboard, trying to decipher the great man's latest work, when a voice from the back said,
"Hang on. That's that nerdy little guy with the specs we all beat up at school."
The jig was up, and Lostmahauser's reputation was in ruins.
But various physicists still look ruefully at his "equations" to this day. There must be SOMETHING in there, right?
Meldreth Lastmahauser now has a new job as a geneticist.
Lostmahauser's Conjecture
Here is the fateful picture of Meldreth Lostmahauser, which finally exposed him as a fake theoretical physicist.
Born in 1938, Lostmahauser grew up in an era of quantum mechanics that was in disarray. No really significant advances had been made in the field since the 1920s, and the physics world was metaphorically twiddling its thumbs, waiting for someone to come up with something.
Anything really.
One day at school, Lostmahauser drew a game of tic-tac-toe on the blackboard. His illegibility and the myopia of the incoming science teacher, who proclaimed it as a significant work, gave Lostmahauser an idea. In a field of work already full of terms such "charm", "strangeness" and "truth" and beauty", he thought he could put a new spin on it.
Over the years, he found that by taking a block of equations from different photographs of leading pioneers, and assembling them in a hodge-podge way using his inimitable illegible style for his own photos, his reputation grew.
It wasn't long before he made up a few words to use, such as "nervayance", "consanguinity" and "polt", and these came into common parlance, often used in theoretical physics today.
This photo, however, was his undoing, when it was shown at a conference of world leading physicists in Berne, 1994.
All eyes were on the equations on the blackboard, trying to decipher the great man's latest work, when a voice from the back said,
"Hang on. That's that nerdy little guy with the specs we all beat up at school."
The jig was up, and Lostmahauser's reputation was in ruins.
But various physicists still look ruefully at his "equations" to this day. There must be SOMETHING in there, right?
Meldreth Lastmahauser now has a new job as a geneticist.