One Hundred Twenty-One Days. Michèle Audin

was put in the chair at 12:20. He died at 12:26.

      This is not a judicial error. It is an “example.”

      For the proletariat, it’s an open declaration of war!

      THE G. CASE

      BY J. MEYERBEER, PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR, SAINT-MAURICE HOSPITAL

       (French Review of Psychiatric Medicine, Vol. 11, 1930)

      Twelve years later, we return to the case of G., a former polytechnician who injured his head in combat, and who was hospitalized after having murdered his aunt, his sister, and his uncle. We refer back to our article in the Gaz. Assoc. Psy. Doc. Fr. (Vol. 28, 1920).

      As we then reported, G. is a calm patient who is well-liked by the staff. In this short note, we revisit his relations with the outside world.

      FAMILY SITUATION

      G.’s oldest sister—who during the first few years visited him regularly and brought him newspapers, and, depending on the season, fruit, cakes, or chocolate—stopped visiting when she gave birth to a baby girl. Apart from the fact that the Saint-Maurice Hospital is not a place for a child, G.’s brother-in-law, a lawyer, thought that her visits could be dangerous for the little girl and thus for her mother as well. She has therefore replaced the visits with regular written correspondence. G. kindly replies to all of her letters.

      CURRENT EVENTS

      Apart from the epistolary exchanges with his sister, G. maintains extensive scientific correspondence with several mathematicians. He also receives periodical mathematics journals and monthly newsletters.

      During our interviews, he never fails to comment on the events he knows something about. His analyses are sometimes surprising in their acuity. Of this we will give but one example, that of the transfer of Jean Jaurès’s remains to the Pantheon (in 1924), which he told us represented a change of mentality, since this act established Jaurès as the war’s first victim.

      MATHEMATICS

      We sometimes think it quite a shame that G. cannot teach mathematics, because he possesses remarkable teaching abilities, which he only has the chance to show during our interviews. We view as evidence the way he summarized an article he was reading on sardine fishing. Here are a few lines from the notes we took during this particular interview:

      “Look at this, Doctor Meyerbeer, during the war, there was less fishing in the Mediterranean, of course, but in what they were catching, there were more and more sharks, in proportion, you see? Well, there’s an Italian scholar who explains this with differential equations. And he proves that, the more sardines are fished, the more sardines there are in the sea.”

      We must confess that we have learned more about mathematics over the course of observing this patient’s behavior than we did at school.

      We should add that G.’s skill as a mathematician is recognized among the experts in the field. He summarizes the results of his research in articles that he then sends to specialized journals, which publish them. His articles appear to be read and used, because they are cited by several mathematicians in other articles that G. has showed us. In one of these articles, his name is associated with a theorem, “G.’s theorem”; another uses “G.’s constant.” Students have even defended dissertations in which they have answered questions raised by G. in his work. He keeps us informed on the day-to-day progress of his research and mathematics in general.

      We asked him if he would like to meet his mathematician correspondents—which we would have considered beneficial for this patient who has no real contact with the world—but he calmly refused, asserting his desire for peace and quiet.

      THE PROBLEM OF THE TWO RACES

      BY R. VON MISES, ISTANBUL

       (Matematicheskii Sbornik, Moscow, 1934)

      The example that follows is, by its very subject, of particular interest.

      In a country in Europe whose inhabitants number around 65 million, the population is composed of two races A and B, with respective figures of 0.9% and 99.1%. A very small number of these inhabitants perform scientific research in physics or chemistry. No absolute scale to measure scientific capacity exists. It is generally accepted that the winners of the Nobel Prize form a set of the highest values with this capacity. The list of winners from the years 1901 to 1933 includes 27 names from said county, of which 5 belong to race A.

      We will now address these figures with established formulas.

      […]

      From these calculations, we can conclude that there is a probability of about 85% that, among the individuals of race A, the probability of there being an eminent talent in physics or chemistry is at least 20 times and at most 42 times greater than in race B.

      EXERCISES IN MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION

       (Matematisches Arbeits- und Lehrbuch, Neuenheim-Verlag, 1937)

       - The construction of an insane asylum costs 6 million Reichsmarks. How many detached houses at 15,000 Reichsmarks each could have been built for that sum?

       - The care of a mentally ill patient costs 8 Reichsmarks a day. How many Reichsmarks will this mentally ill patient cost after 40 years?