"Lobachevsky" is a humorous song by Tom Lehrer, referring to the mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.[1] According to Lehrer, the song is "not intended as a slur on [Lobachevsky's] character" and the name was chosen "solely for prosodic reasons".[2][3]
In the introduction, Lehrer describes the song as an adaptation of a routine that Danny Kaye did to honor the Russian actor Constantin Stanislavski.[3] (The Danny Kaye routine is sung from the perspective of a famous Russian actor who learns and applies Stanislavski's secret to method acting: "Suffer.") [4] Lehrer sings the song from the point of view of an eminent Russian mathematician who learns from Lobachevsky that plagiarism is the secret of success in mathematics ("only be sure always to call it please 'research'"). The narrator later uses this strategy to get a paper published ahead of a rival, then to write a book and earn a fortune selling the movie rights.
Lehrer wrote that he did not know Russian. In the song he quotes two "book reviews" in Russian; the first is a long sentence that he then translates succinctly as "It stinks". The second, a different but equally long sentence, is also translated as "It stinks." The actual text of these sentences bear no relation to academics: the first phrase quotes Mussorgsky's "Song of the Flea": Russian: Жил-был король когда-то, при нём блоха жила., romanized:Zhil-byl korol' kogda-to, pri nom blokha zhila., lit.'Once there was a king who had a pet flea.' The second references a Russian joke: Russian: Я иду туда, куда сам царь идёт пешком, romanized:Ya idu tuda, kuda sam tsar' idot peshkom., lit.'Now I must go where even the Tsar goes on foot.' [the bathroom].[5]
The song is frequently quoted,[9][10][11] especially in works about plagiarism.[12][13][14] Writing about it in Billboard, Jim Bessman calls the song "dazzlingly inventive in its shameless promotion of plagiarism", calling out in particular a sequence in which Lehrer strings together rhymes from the names of ten Russian[sic] cities.[3] Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg has called it "surely the greatest comic musical number of all time about mathematical publishing".[15]
↑ Curcic, Barbara (January 1976), "Mathematical quotations for all occasions", The Mathematics Teacher, 69 (1): 40–44, doi:10.5951/MT.69.1.0040, JSTOR27960358 .
↑ Laake, Petter; Benestad, Haakon Breien (2015), "2.5.2 Plagiarism", Research in Medical and Biological Sciences: From Planning and Preparation to Grant Application and Publication, Academic Press, p.55, ISBN9780128001547 .
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