P.G. Wodehouse on Euclid

Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying: “Don’t look now, but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth.”

(taken from the first pages of Uncle Fred in the Springtime; due to a rather unfortunate fall in the stairs last week, I have to rest and watch my back for a few days, and hence I’ve been in need of light and refreshing literature to pass the time, turning therefore in part to re-reading some novels of P.G. Wodehouse.)

Published by

Kowalski

I am a professor of mathematics at ETH Zürich since 2008.

3 thoughts on “P.G. Wodehouse on Euclid”

  1. I haven’t read that one yet, though I’ve read “Leave it to Psmith” (note to those readers who haven’t: “the ‘P’ is silent, as in ‘Ptarmigan'”…)

  2. Thanks, I was looking for this quote to describe my teenage nephew, whom I hadn’t seen for a couple of years, to his father, my brother.

Comments are closed.