[ExI] the rest of the story.

[spike at rainier66.com]

After all these years, I find out the rest of the story just today.

 

In 1995, Ernst Mayer and Scott Kurowski organized Prime95, which is a way to
search for Mersenne primes as a background process.  I started with it in
1996.

 

December 7, 2001, we were having a local party to celebrate the discovery of
the 39th Mersenne prime.  We heard that Dr. Knuth himself might attend.  We
ordered our food.  About half an hour after the order, in walks Dr. Knuth.
Ernst (shown on the right in the photo) offered to have Dr. Knuth take his
dinner, and he would order something else, being as how Knuth was under time
pressure but Ernst was not.  The Donald cheerfully accepted the offer.  The
food arrived a few minutes later.  The professor devoured the biggest
chimichanga I ever saw, inhaled the thing.  When he finished eating, the
Tied House wouldn't have needed to wash the plate; it was clean enough to
serve the next customer.  Knuth then abruptly said he had to run, thanked
Ernst (whose replacement dinner was just arriving) and off he went.  

 

I think The Donald was present for perhaps 20 very memorable minutes total.

 

Ernst contacted me yesterday asking if I had any photos of the event.  He
has archived my paltry collection along with this rather hilarious write-up:

 

 



 

Spike's description of the photo of me undertaking the task to ".instruct
the wayward professor in the way of truth, justice and the American Way".
Knuth was a surprise shower-upper, the story behind that goes like so:
Having met Knuth with Scott K shortly after moving to Silicon Valley a few
years before, once we organized the M39 bash, I thought it would be neat to
invite the great man himself. Turns out he was giving a CS seminar at
Stanford the week before, so I showed up and at the end of the talk slipped
an invite to the bash onto the edge of his lectern. Had no idea whether he'd
actually show up until he did. And with a healthy appetite, too - he said
he'd spent the early part of the evening at some church-music-group (he
plays the pipe organ, and even has one in his home) social, where "they
didn't feed me."

 

 

 

 

OK then, that was the rest of the story I only learned 16 years later:  Dr.
Knuth was at a church organ party, nobody thought to feed him, for at such a
gathering, they would treat him as any ordinary person, he shows up at the
Tied House famished and under time pressure, Dr. Mayer offered his dinner,
which Dr. Knuth  gratefully devoured and promptly fled, Dr. Mayer ate and
visited with the rest of us mere mortals at his leisure, I had the time of
my life among my own living heroes. 

 

Cool!

 

spike

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