The Three-Body Problem by Catherine Shaw Read Free Book Online Page A

would be right here in Cambridge.’
    ‘Really? Do you know them? Are they doing it?’ she asked.
    ‘No one has actually declared that he is setting about it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But you know, that doesn’t prove much, does it? After all, it’s quite imaginable that a person might keep the whole thing silent, to avoid embarrassment in case of failure, and yet submit a secret manuscript nonetheless.’
    ‘And if someone were doing it secretly, who could it be?’
    ‘Strike me pink if that isn’t exactly what Akers was thinking of doing,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why yes, wasn’t my friend Weatherburn telling us that Akers had said he had found a solution on the night before he died? The poor fellow, what hard luck for him – perhaps he was finally on the brink of the fame and recognition he always dreamt of.’
    ‘Did he, poor man? And why didn’t he get it?’
    ‘Oh, Akers was a good mathematician, he had a good, swift brain, but he lacked something which could have made him really great. He didn’t have a fundamental grasp of the larger nature of things. It was as though you put him in front of a puzzle, Emily, and he would grasp two pieces and try to put them together, and if they didn’t fit, he would try another and yet another, very quickly and with a sharp eye, so that eventually he would put quite a number together, and yet somehow he would have no idea of what the picture puzzle was actually showing. It’s difficult to explain.’
    ‘But do you think he might have found a solution to the first problem anyway?’
    ‘Why not? Perhaps it was there for anyone to see, and just needed a sudden, blinding vision to find it. Perhaps he found it by dint of “deep and persevering work”, or even by doing the kind of “long and complicated calculations” he was not supposed to need! Unless he wrote something down, we shall never know now; why it’s just as bad as Dirichlet.’
    ‘But he did write something,’ I observed. ‘He had a paper with a formula in his breast pocket, and he even told Mr Weatherburn that he had written a rough manuscript!’
    ‘Oh! Has anybody searched through the papers he left inhis rooms?’ Emily squeaked, jumping up and down eagerly.
    ‘Oh yes, naturally, his notes and papers have been gone through carefully and inspected and organised, by the police, and also by mathematicians, I should think. Nobody appears to have found anything like a manuscript containing a complete solution to the n-body problem – if they had, we would certainly know about it by now.’
    ‘Perhaps he already sent it in?’
    ‘Unlikely, if he told Weatherburn the day before his death that it was just a rough manuscript – and he would have had plenty of time before the 1st of June to better it.’
    ‘If only we had the breast-pocket paper he showed Mr Weatherburn,’ I put in, ‘surely it would help!’
    He looked at me musingly. ‘You are right, really, Miss Duncan. Imagine – what you are saying might actually turn out to be very important! The personal effects he had on him at his death are probably still in the police station, as his death is still being investigated. I wonder if they have found that paper; I wonder if anybody has been to ask. I shall go down to the station tomorrow and enquire about it myself.’
    ‘Oh, how
exciting
,’ cried Emily. ‘Imagine if you find it – then you could solve the problem and win the prize, and you could give the medal to Miss Duncan as a gift.’
    ‘Emily!’ Mr Morrison was quite shocked. ‘One doesn’t
steal
other people’s ideas.’
    ‘Really? Can ideas be stolen?’ she responded in surprise.
    ‘Oh yes, ideas are more valuable than property for a mathematician. He would far prefer to lose his money or belongings than his ideas.’
    ‘Well, but here it would be from a man who’s dead!’
    ‘You may steal from a man’s memory, Emily,’ he answered. He looked intensely serious, and I felt deeply impressed. I will not soon forget