Немного текста из интервью американского математика Джона Исбела:
Цитата:
Isbell: ...Our second and third joint papers were written only when we were both at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1956-57 and they put us in the same office.
KDM: You were drafted in October '54 and you were in Madison in the summer of '55'?
Isbell: On furlough. I was invited for the four-week Summer Institute, but I only had two weeks' furlough time earned. I think maybe I had less: two weeks a year, and they were giving me an advance, letting me have two weeks after nine months.
KDM: Did the army keep using you to attack Purple People-Eaters?
Isbell: Oh, no, that was just basic training. Then they sent me to Aberdeen Proving Ground and I wrote papers. When the Army permitted. We had a little celebration the day the Labs had advertised a lecture by AI Jennings on his dissertation and people came from as far as Penn, in Philadelphia, and from the University of Maryland, and they went to the room where the talk was to be and some ***hole had to get up and say: "I'm afraid Dr. Gennings has KP today. The lecture is canceled".
KDM: I seem to remember Don Johnson telling me that you and he and Mel had published a joint paper and you and he hadn't met at the time...
[Цензура моя]
Я в истории не силен, но может, кто из форумчан поможет восстановить контекст. О чем идет речь в приведенном отрывке? Я пытался погуглить про "фиолетовых", но это словосочетание, похоже, перегружено смыслами, и я ничего не понял. Это шутка такая или какой-то военный конфликт имел место быть?
