Miscellaneous

Here are a few links not directly related to my research.

Chess problems
Some links to chess problems on the web.
Consciousness
My Putnam problems
A list of problems I submitted for inclusion on the Putnam Exam when I was a member of the three-person committee to write the 1984-86 exams (8 page PostScript file).
Juggling
Online card trick
Encyclopedias, glossaries, etc.
Some specialized reference sites on the web.
Illusions
Some amazing optical illusions.
At Caltech during the academic year 1963-1964 I took the first course (Ma 108, Advanced Calculus) ever taught by Donald Knuth. Here is the front page from my final exam of the second quarter. Note the typical Knuth humor in the lower-right corner. Here and here is the exam.
Partial Stanley family: my wife, father, brother, mother, me, brother's wife, nephew, cousin, and cousin's wife, taken 1999 in Englewood, Colorado
Ellis Island: my mother's father's mother arriving in the USA at Ellis Island around 1895. The second person from the left is the maternal grandmother of Michael Tilson Thomas. My grandfather was not yet born. (Caption at top written by my mother.)
Seidenstein family: my mother's mother's parents and three of their children, around 1903. My mother's mother is the second from the right.
My son Kenneth is currently a Research Manager at OpenAI.
Some computerized pictures of him.
A book that he wrote (with Joel Lehman)
A talk he gave on open-endedness in AI on August 14, 2020
An interview about novelty search as a weapon against the status quo (October 12, 2020)
Sharon: a web page about my daughter
A book she wrote. We both had books published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.
Another book she wrote.
Birth announcement arranged by my grandparents. Note: this announcement suggests that I was born in Larchmont, NY, but this is false. I was born in New York City. My mother was living with her parents in Larchmont when I was born, and my father was overseas serving in World War II.
Web page of my mother's father's sister's daughter's son. (We were born in the same year.)
Gian-Carlo Rota, 1932-1999
Some links related to my thesis adviser.
Introductory Lectures in Combinatorial Analysis (first few pages), from a course taught by Gian-Carlo Rota at M.I.T. in the fall of 1962, written by G. Feldman, J. Levinger, and Richard Stanley. What is remarkable about these notes? I had nothing to do with them! This imposter (but with middle name John) obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics from M.I.T. in 1969 on "The phonology of the Navaho verb" (in fact, when I was a graduate student at Harvard I received a telegram offering me a job in the UCLA Department of Linguistics!) and later a Ph.D. in math from U. C. Berkeley. See here and here. At the time Rota's course was given I was a freshman at Caltech.
An unexpected relationship among some of my former students
The Early Years
How I became interested in mathematics (two page PDF file).
No Credit for Being First
An explanation of how I once was the only person in the world to know the answer to a famous question of Serre and Kaplansky (independently), yet I deservedly received absolutely no credit for answering this question. This blurb appeared in the Harvard College Mathematics Review, 2013.
How the Upper Bound Conjecture was Proved.
Discussion of how I proved the Upper Bound Conjecture for Spheres (10 page pdf file).
Retirement gift from Sheila Sundaram and Erik Altman, received 16 March 2018 as two framed pictures.
My Erdős anecdote.
Professor Eubanks in Zetaland
An unusual method for proving the Riemann hypothesis.
Mysterious Chinese phrase.
Oimyakon and Verkhoyansk weather.
The coldest towns in the world during winter. Two other chilly places: Amundsen-Scott Station (South Pole) and Vostok (the coldest place on the earth's surface).
Polynomials with interesting sets of zeros: some examples
History question for enumerative combinatorialists: what famous person was assassinated on {3}? Answer.
Find a positive integer n<10,000,000 such that the first four digits (in the decimal expansion) of n^1,000,000 are all different. The problem should be solved in your head. Answer.
Letter from Fritz Hirzebruch to S. S. Chern, dated 11 November 2003, explaining Catalan and related numbers. I am grateful to Bill Yongchuan Chen for giving me a copy of this letter.
Top box office movies. An exceptional number are math-related. Thanks to Christine Bessenrodt for discovering this surprising information.
On what day in the year 2025 (among all days that year) will the least number of women in the United States have a natural (noninduced) childbirth? Answer.
Hidden Animals, a word puzzle for children.
The star-nosed mole : a strange-looking animal
A contribution to bridge bidding theory entitled "Informative redoubles of 7NTx" (Postscript or PDF), Bridge Today, July/August 2001, pp. 52-53 (two pages). Also discussed in the ACBL Bridge Bulletin, February 2002, page 116.