Re: [HM] desmic?


Subject: Re: [HM] desmic?
From: Julio Gonzalez Cabillon (jgc@adinet.com.uy)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2000 - 13:09:44 EST


 -

                                              Montevideo, 01.01.00
 Dear All,

 [Lambrou Michael]

> Julio is absolutely right. The mathematician Cyparissos Stephanos
> introduced the term. He, a native Greek speaker, coined it to mean
> whatever it means in current Greek, namely "bundle, bunch, sheaf".

 [John Conway]

> I am interested to hear this, and was particularly happy to read
> your brief biography of Stephanos. But let me ask if you're really
> sure that he was referring to modern, rather than classical, Greek.

 Stephanos's first lines of his "Sur les systemes desmiques de trois
 tetraedres" (1879) are:

      "Les systemes de trois tetraedres formant trois surfaces
      d'un faisceau du quatrieme ordre, systemes qu'on peut
      appeler _desmiques_ (de _d/esmh_, faisceau), jouent dans
      la Geometrie de l'espace le meme role que les systemes
      de quatre triangles appartenant a un meme faisceau de
      cubiques dans la Geometrie du plan."

 Happy New Year! JGC



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