Most memorable titles

Question

Given the vast number of new papers / preprints that hit the internet everyday, one factor that may help papers stand out for a broader, though possibly more casual, audience is their title. This view was my motivation for asking this question almost 7 years ago (wow!), and it remains equally true today (those who subscribe to arXiv feeds, MO feeds, etc., may agree).

I was wondering if the MO-users would be willing to share their wisdom with me on what makes the title of a paper memorable for them; or perhaps just cite an example of title they find memorable?

This advice would be very helpful in helping me (and perhaps others) in designing better, more informative titles (not only for papers, but also for example, for MO questions).

One title that I find memorable is:

Nineteen dubious ways to compute the exponential of a matrix, by Moler and van Loan.

The response to this question has been quite huge. So, what have I learned from it? A few things at least. Here is my summary of the obvious: Amongst the various "memorable" titles reported, some of the following are true:

A title can be memorable, attractive, or even both (to oversimplify a bit);
A title becomes truly memorable if the accompanying paper had memorable substance
A title can be attractive even without having memorable material.
To reach the broadest audience, attractive titles are good, though mathematicians might sometimes feel irritated by needlessly cute titles
Titles that are bold, are usually short, have an element of surprise, but do not depart too much from the truth seems to be more attractive in general. 5.101 Mathematical succinctness might appeal to some people---but is perhaps not that memorable for me---so perhaps such titles are attractive, but maybe not memorable.
If you are a bigshot, you can get away with pretty much any title!

For news article and fiction, certainly; in some rare cases for expository material. But I can't say it's ever happened to me for math research articles (I'll post an almost-exception in the answers). And just as well, really, most papers have really dull titles! (The worst is when the titles are dull and vague.) — Thierry Zell, Oct 31 '10 at 14:45
Of note is that the Moler-Van Loan paper also has a 20th anniversary update (also published in SIAM Reviews IIRC). — J. M. isn't a mathematician, Oct 31 '10 at 14:48
@Thierry: When I go article surfing on arXiv to discover new, potentially relevant articles, I often go by title alone. For fields that I am more familiar with, there the title is less determining. — Suvrit, Oct 31 '10 at 14:52
I'd have put in "A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting" as an answer, but that's carrying a joke too far I think. — J. M. isn't a mathematician, Oct 31 '10 at 15:19
If I find a paper by following a citation or recommendation or similar, then of course the title makes no difference. But often I also find papers by browsing—on the arXiv, or on an author's list of publications, or similar—and then, a title that's eye-catching, descriptive, and mathematically interesting certainly does make a difference. The same qualities are even more useful in an abstract. — Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine, Oct 31 '10 at 16:18
Entertaining as this list may be, I seriously doubt that it will be a useful prescriptive guide as to how to title one's papers. Editors' and readers' tastes also change over the years — Yemon Choi, Oct 31 '10 at 19:35
Since this question seems to have turned into a big list of "memorable/amusing paper titles," ignoring the primary question "what makes the title of a paper memorable?", perhaps it might be helpful to re-ask that question but without the loophole "...or perhaps just cite an example of title they find memorable". — Mike Shulman, Nov 01 '10 at 00:23
I have an example of a title which could be an example in the negative direction. This was the first paper that I wrote in 1972 and the title was "on A_n(x,y;p,q) and F_n(x,y;p,q)". (A_n(x,y;p,q) was a notation from Riordan's "combinatorial identities" and F_n(x,y;p,q) was my own notation. Riordan was the referee and his first remark (in a long list) was that the title should be changed. — Gil Kalai, Nov 01 '10 at 00:23
@Yemon: to other mathematicians, I would presume. Obviously there are differences, but surely there are generalities as well. — Mike Shulman, Nov 01 '10 at 05:41
@Mike: I guess I am in the exceptional set, then. There is also the conflation of "memorable" with "arresting" or "interesting", and as you yourself have implied I think these are all different. I am much more likely to remember the core result of a paper, at least one of the authors, and the journal, than to remember the exact title. E.g. Haagerup's Inventiones paper proving that nuclear C*-algebras are amenable, or Gowers' GAFA paper giving a revolutionary new proof for Szemeredi length 4. — Yemon Choi, Nov 01 '10 at 18:51
I have now caught a duplicate answer for the second time in as many days on this thread. To me this casts doubt on the usefulness of this thread, but I acknowledge that I have a long-standing bias against these types of questions, which from previous discussions on meta seems not to be shared by most people — Yemon Choi, Nov 02 '10 at 01:19
Dear Yemon, I also have mixed feelings towards this and similar questions. Usually I would like to judge such big list questions more by the academic value and less by the entertaining value. But I still find it a lot of fun. And the answers are both entertaining and educational. — Gil Kalai, Nov 03 '10 at 04:53
Just to make myself clear; Whether one likes or dislikes the problem I think it will not be appropriate to close it, it should stay open on its own merits, and certainly because of the attention it received. — Gil Kalai, Nov 03 '10 at 05:00
Many of the replies that are voted up below simply mention particular memorable titles. One of my replies mentioned this one:
Ancestors, Cardinals, and Representatives by T. D. Parsons.

This offended an anonymous person who will not step forward and explicitly explain why. Can anyone shed any light on this?

And what exactly is the utility of encouraging anonymity in such matters, as this site does? — Michael Hardy, Nov 03 '10 at 15:28
Is Suvrit going to reappear and tell us how useful this list of the droll and the Wildean has been in helping to write titles of papers? — Yemon Choi, Nov 03 '10 at 19:49
It's not about drollness as an end-in-itself, or at least it shouldn't be. Rather it's about drollness used to serve a purpose: to call people's attention to things worthy of attention and to help them remember things worth remembering. — Michael Hardy, Nov 03 '10 at 19:53
@Yemon -- I am busy digesting these titles, and will try to summarize what I have learned from these titles. While the list might not directly help everybody, certainly many of the "memorable" titles are inspiring. Of course, just by staring at a list of great mathematicians, one cannot oneself become great, here too, by merely looking at the list, one cannot immediately start churning out good titles. — Suvrit, Nov 03 '10 at 20:56
I liked this question, but somehow also feel it was open long enough. Thus I am contributing to already existing votes to close. — , Aug 23 '11 at 18:52
See also http://www.ncatlab.org/nlab/show/punny+title for more funny titles often including a pun or repetition, including the suggestion of Strøm's article which is also listed by Petersen, below. — Zoran Skoda, Aug 23 '11 at 19:48
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/05/diagram-prize-oddest-title — Will Jagy, Aug 23 '11 at 23:46
I don't see anyone beating The Origin of Faeces. Although, for the actual Diagram Prize for that year, the winner was Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, for which part of the original idea was due to Bill Thurston. — Will Jagy, Aug 23 '11 at 23:58
One of the most memorable MO post titles is, in my opinion, here: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/19152/why-is-a-topology-made-up-of-open-sets — Benjamin Dickman, Nov 28 '13 at 05:30
For some reason no further answers can be posted, so let me share with you Continuing horrors of topology without choice by C. Good and I.J. Tree, and related to that Horrors of topology without AC: A nonnormal orderable space by E.K. van Douwen, Disasters in topology without the axiom of choice by K. Keremedis, Disasters in metric topology without choice by E. Tachtsis. — Martin Brandenburg, May 23 '14 at 14:26
I quite like "A cottage industry of lax extensions" by Dirk Hofmann and Gavin J. Seal. — Martin Brandenburg, Jan 22 '16 at 15:21
I am rather proud of the title of my paper "The Lie Lie algebra" https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.01192. There is a construction of an $\mathcal O$-Lie algebra for any cyclic operad $\mathcal O$, and the paper considers the case when $\mathcal O$ is the Lie operad. — Jim Conant, Dec 02 '16 at 01:11
New book from the American Math Society: Alice and Bob meet Banach. http://bookstore.ams.org/surv-223 — Gerry Myerson, Jul 27 '17 at 01:45
A Radical Approach to Algebra by Mary W Gray https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_radical_approach_to_algebra.html?id=BIQZAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y — Konrad Swanepoel, May 23 '19 at 15:46
I posted in the colorful-language thread, but it occurs to me it really goes here: @TheoJohnson-Freyd's recent post reminded me of the paper Griess and Ryba - Finite simple groups which projectively embed in an exceptional Lie group are classified!. — LSpice, Jun 26 '19 at 16:03
I just stumbled upon "Counting your chickens with Markov chains" by David and Lori McCune — Jose Brox, Mar 05 '20 at 21:44
Once I went to a lecture entitled 'Happiness is not in pants'. It turned out to be about using triangles instead of pants to study surfaces. — Dry Bones, Aug 13 '20 at 06:07
Comments seem to be fun, diverse, and a good reflection of human nature, a plurality of human perspectives. What I applaud is that plurality without, in most cases, the need to destroy our mathematical culture. — A rural reader, Mar 05 '21 at 03:59
About $6.$ Like The Who, "Tommy, A Rock Opera". Since they got away with that, they did: "White City: A Novel". — calc ll, Sep 27 '22 at 22:39
It's not a title, but the abstract of Faltings' "Finiteness of coherent cohomology for proper fppf stacks" starts with "We prove the result in the title ...". — , Jan 03 '23 at 16:11

David Roberts · Answer 1 · 2022-01-29T14:34:53.060

227

I can't believe no one's mentioned this:

Pavol Ševera, Some title containing the words "homotopy" and "symplectic", e.g. this one, arXiv:math/0105080

edited Jan 29 '22 at 14:34

answered Nov 01 '10 at 01:47

David Roberts

33,851

4

I tend to remember this as and call it "Some title..." – David Roberts Jan 24 '11 at 03:45
3

inching towards the proverbial 100 $\uparrow$ – Suvrit Sep 15 '11 at 09:58
7

Yes, it's my greatest claim to fame on MO. – David Roberts Sep 15 '11 at 10:20
15

Memorable yes, but I would not consider this a 'good title.' Titles should effectively communicate the content of the work, in addition to whatever good aesthetics, wittiness, etc. (nor though they be memes that encourage readers to not take the work seriously). – Dec 18 '17 at 18:36
Very nice self reference you did there : I had to click on the arxiv link to see the very title you mentionned! – Jérôme JEAN-CHARLES May 04 '20 at 15:34

score 168 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:35

168

The flattering lie You Could Have Invented Spectral Sequences by Timothy Y. Chow.

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:35

Georges Elencwajg

46,833

142

subtitled "Also, that shirt looks good on you." – Cam McLeman Oct 31 '10 at 17:14
4

+1 because more people should learn of the existence of this paper. – Ketil Tveiten Nov 01 '10 at 12:39
2

Nice one. I have sometimes wondered if I should have chosen a better title than Prime Simplicity for my joint paper with Catherine Woodgold, setting the record straight about what Euclid did and did not do in a certain well-known but not-well-known proof. – Michael Hardy Nov 01 '10 at 19:56
18

There should be a series of "You Could Have Invented" papers. – Akiva Weinberger Jun 02 '16 at 02:19

score 167 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:04

167

"Hodge's general conjecture is false for trivial reasons."

answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:04

David E Speyer

150,821

3

I love that title so much. – Gunnar Þór Magnússon Oct 31 '10 at 15:58
2

That is indeed a great title! – Suvrit Oct 31 '10 at 16:35
21

I dissent. This title is arrogant and vulgar ("trivial" is a ugly word), unworthy of Grothendieck who invented a lot of beautiful, decently modest, and often informative title, such as "Sur quelques points d'algèbre homologique" or "Récoltes et semailles", or "à la poursuite des champs". – Joël Dec 28 '10 at 21:44
65

It is a modest title (though it might be taken to be offensive) - he doesn't say: "The Hodge Conjecture is false for very deep reasons and only I could have disproved it." – Lennart Meier May 02 '11 at 22:12
60

I don't think it's offensive at all -- all one has to do is read a few words of the paper to see that Grothendieck is merely performing a small but useful service. The title is catchy enough that one is easily invited to discover just that. – Todd Trimble May 08 '11 at 14:50
If there is a paper explaining what Grothendieck actually says here, it may be worth mentioning the number of pages thereof :-) – Mikhail Katz Feb 06 '18 at 17:10
7

Grothendieck's paper is 5 pages, and seems to explain itself pretty clearly. – David E Speyer Feb 06 '18 at 19:48
I disagree. The title is objective: he is simply saying that he has realised that the conjecture is false when one thinks carefully about it and that this escaped the attention of Hodge in formulating it. I don't see the arrogance in that title, although I have seen it other works of Grothendieck that I have read. – Hollis Williams Oct 24 '20 at 16:06
Great. This title despite its seriousness left me with a big smile – Jorge Zuniga Nov 23 '22 at 15:10

score 161 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:27

161

One that comes immediately to mind is Can one hear the shape of a drum?

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:27

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 14:30

Andrea Ferretti

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1

I've heard of this paper, but not read it. What is the answer ;-) ? – Suvrit Oct 31 '10 at 19:06
15

In brief, no; there are "drums" with different shapes but the same "sound". – Gerry Myerson Oct 31 '10 at 20:23
17

@Suvrit: Yes, but only if one knows a priori that the drum is convex. – Simon Lyons Oct 31 '10 at 21:43
Kac' question is still open for bounded smooth domains. – Manfred Sauter Mar 30 '18 at 13:10
1

@SimonLyons: Sorry to revive this comment after almost eight years, but do you have a reference for the answer being "yes" in the convex case? I remember hearing in several discussions that the problem is still open even for convex two-dimensional domains with analytic boundary. – Jochen Glueck May 23 '18 at 18:19
1

It was a long time ago and not my field - I think someone mentioned a result along those lines in a lecture I saw. This might be the right reference: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9901005 – Simon Lyons May 23 '18 at 20:09

score 145 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:27

145

A minus sign that used to annoy me but now I know why it is there by Peter Tingley.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:27

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 23:12

alex

966

score 136 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 04 '10 at 23:36

136

Mark Van Raamsdonk's Princeton PhD thesis in string theory was called "Making the most out of zero branes and a weak background". Priceless.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhDT........40V

answered Nov 04 '10 at 23:36

Jim Bryan

5,900

score 105 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:32

105

My favourite : "My Graph", by H.S.M. Coxeter.

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:32

James

1,879

My graph brings all the boys to the yard? – Hollis Williams Oct 24 '20 at 16:08
Maybe that's the graph that Nickelback wanted to show us all along? – TheOutZ Feb 10 '24 at 02:01

score 92 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 23 '22 at 04:22

92

Given the atmosphere of terror and fear in recent years, I did a double take when I first glanced at Bruce Berndt's paper "Ramanujan's association with radicals in India".

edited Nov 23 '22 at 04:22

Kenta Suzuki

1,827

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:20

SandeepJ

1,617

54

That reminds me of a course description from the Harvard course catalogue, circa 1970: something like, "The theory of blowing up, with special attention to local problems." Fortunately, this was offered by the Department of Mathematics, not Social Relations. – Gerry Myerson Oct 31 '10 at 20:30
2

I know this paper, but I'm not entirely sure Berndt was being deliberately provoking... :) – J. M. isn't a mathematician Oct 31 '10 at 23:13
In my experience with him I'd say he wasn't, but there's a streak in him I wouldn't put it past. – Adam Hughes Nov 16 '10 at 05:09
1

@GerryMyerson about blowing up, see also the story about the algebraic geometry people at airport security, at http://mathoverflow.net/a/53738/5340 (and previously at http://mathoverflow.net/a/23074/5340 ) – Zsbán Ambrus Sep 21 '16 at 20:15

score 84 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 20 '20 at 08:14

84

John Stallings' "How not to prove the Poincare Conjecture" is lovely.

edited Jul 20 '20 at 08:14

Stephan Kolassa

153

answered Nov 01 '10 at 02:08

James

1,879

score 84 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 01 '10 at 06:11

84

And in the graph theory corner we have the famous Harary/Read paper "Is the null-graph a pointless concept?"

answered Nov 01 '10 at 06:11

Gordon Royle

12,288

68

This epic paper appears in Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 406, Springer, 1974, 37-44. The abstract is the following:
The graph with no points and no lines is discussed critically. Arguments for and against its official admittance as a graph are presented. This is accompanied by an extensive survey of the literature. Paradoxical properties of the null-graph are noted. No conclusion is reached.
– Richard Stanley Nov 02 '10 at 01:31
7

I don't know now whether i like the abstract more or the title; absolutely fantastic. – Suvrit Nov 03 '10 at 17:29
5

I like the title more. There are many cases where the degenerate case is hard: 0!, a^0 vs 0^a, 1 is a prime, which we resolve by how many theorems need special cases. – Ross Millikan Nov 10 '10 at 04:57
@RossMillikan All answers are obvious for natural reasons: $0! = 1$, $a^0 = 1$, $0^a = 0$ for $a \geq 1$, 1 is not prime. – Arshak Aivazian Apr 18 '22 at 12:38

score 75 · Answer 11 · edited Jul 19 '13 at 19:47

75

The book $A=B$.

edited Jul 19 '13 at 19:47

Gejza Jenča

827

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:40

Mariano Suárez-Álvarez

46,795

Could you give a reference? – Martin Brandenburg Oct 31 '10 at 17:38
@Martin: I did: the text is a link (but MO+MathJax do not seem to underline or otherwise emphasize link when the linking text is just math) Googling for "A=B" gets you there, too. – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Oct 31 '10 at 17:48
Just add some other text to the ink, then - e.g. "The book A=B". – Harry Altman Oct 31 '10 at 18:30
51

+1. This also brings to mind "Generatingfunctionology", which is itself pretty memorable. – James Oct 31 '10 at 20:34

score 70 · Answer 12 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

70

"On $O_n$" by D.E. Evans. ($\mathcal{O_n}$ is notation Cuntz gave for the algebras he introduced in "Simple $C^*$-algebras generated by isometries".)

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:44

Jonas Meyer

7,279

37

That resembles Connes/Consani's "Fun with F_1" - 1 in french is "un". – Peter Arndt Oct 31 '10 at 20:49
30

There is also the sequel, "On $O_{n+1}$" by Araki, Carey, and Evans: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=757434 – Jonas Meyer Nov 02 '10 at 17:36
12

Have you ever tried to google that paper (without knowing who wrote it, of course)? Hopeless! :-) – Ulrich Pennig May 02 '11 at 21:30
8

@Ulrich: The first result that Google Scholar returns when I type On O_n into it is precisely this paper. I wouldn't exactly say that googling this paper is “hopeless”. – Dmitri Pavlov May 08 '11 at 18:50
3

@Dmitri: I just tried that in Google Scholar and it didn't work for me. – Timothy Chow Nov 17 '11 at 03:32

score 58 · Answer 13 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

58

A Midsummer Knot's Dream, by Allison Henrich, Noël MacNaughton, Sneha Narayan, Oliver Pechenik, Robert Silversmith, Jennifer Townsend

It is quite funny to read

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:40

Just a mathematician

1,317

score 56 · Answer 14 · edited Aug 17 '13 at 06:54

56

The AKS paper PRIMES is in P is a pretty memorable title for me.

edited Aug 17 '13 at 06:54

Kaveh

5,362

answered Oct 31 '10 at 14:46

J. M. isn't a mathematician

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22

Certainly it's a memorable title, but I keep having to fight the urge to reply "No, they isn't!" I would have preferred a title like "Deterministic, polynomial-time primality testing," but that would not have been memorable, so perhaps they made the right choice. – Henry Cohn Oct 31 '10 at 16:07
I guess I should have put in my motivation: while I'm not normally interested in number theory, the title "jumped" at me, so to speak. – J. M. isn't a mathematician Oct 31 '10 at 16:48
9

@Henry, to be fair, the title was actually "PRIMES is in P", where 'PRIMES' refers not to the set of primes, but the (hypothetical) (deterministic) algorithm to test for primality. – dorkusmonkey May 03 '11 at 09:48
14

Actually, it does refer to the set of primes (see the first page of the article). I agree that the title is syntactically correct; I'm just bothered by how it sounds when you read it out loud. – Henry Cohn May 03 '11 at 13:25

VladAr · Answer 15 · 2010-10-31T16:44:35.337

55

Everybody knows what a Hopf algebra is

edited Oct 31 '10 at 16:44

answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:05

VladAr

364

score 55 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:34

55

Zaphod Beeblebrox's Brain and the Fifty-ninth Row of Pascal's Triangle

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:34

score 52 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:22

52

Finding composite order ordinary elliptic curves using the Cocks-Pinch method, by D. Boneh, K. Rubin and A. Silverberg. (To appear in the Journal of Number Theory.)

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:22

Pete L. Clark

64,763

13

+1 because I'm so shallow. :D – J. M. isn't a mathematician Oct 31 '10 at 16:50
37

We have ways of making number theorists talk... – Todd Trimble May 08 '11 at 14:57
1

Journal of Number Theory, Vol. 131 (5), 2011, pp. 832-841. – Gerry Myerson Jul 21 '20 at 03:15
This is obviously in direct contrast to the Cox-Zucker machine. – TheOutZ Jan 12 '24 at 17:53

score 48 · Answer 18 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:38

48

I find it dubious that anyone here will get better at choosing titles for their papers by reading these examples.

Nevertheless, I like the title "The homotopy category is a homotopy category" by Arne Strøm. I also like the very apt title "$\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{22}$ is of general type" by Gavril Farkas. The paper starts like this:

The aim of this paper is to prove the following result:

Theorem: The moduli space of curves of genus 22 is of general type.

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:38

Dan Petersen

39,284

11

Yes: a title can be effectively eye-catching not just by being humorous or off the wall, but also simply by being very mathematically expressive and succinct. – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Oct 31 '10 at 18:54

score 48 · Answer 19 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

48

The paper Division by three by Peter G. Doyle and John Horton Conway

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:26

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 03:15

N C

1

2

Reading this paper is a pure moment of happiness! (Except for figure 2, which makes look complicated a proof which is perfectly clear when expressed in words). – Joël Nov 15 '16 at 03:26
4

And, one-upping this title: Patrick Lutz, Conway Can Divide by Three, But I Can’t. – darij grinberg Jan 20 '22 at 18:15

score 47 · Answer 20 · answered Nov 01 '10 at 02:12

The missing axiom of matroid theory is lost forever

A emotional variation on absolute negative results.
Refs : Vámos, Peter (1978), "The missing axiom of matroid theory is lost forever", Journal of the London Mathematical Society, II. Ser. 18: AT : http://jlms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s2-18/3/403.extract

score 46 · Answer 21 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

46

A Group of Order 8,315,553,613,086,720,000 by J H Conway, Bull. London Math. Soc. (1969) 1 (1): 79-88, https://doi.org/10.1112/blms/1.1.79

Maybe it's cheating to call this memorable - I remembered there was a Conway paper with a title of this type, but I certainly don't claim to have remembered the exact title!

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 11:36

Gerry Myerson

39,024

64

I'm told that shortly after the Hall-Wales paper "The Simple Group of Order 604,800" (J. Algebra 9 (1968), 417-450) was published, the editors received an anonymous submission entitled "The Simple Group of Order 604,801". Sure enough, 604801 is prime. – Henry Cohn Mar 08 '11 at 18:12
4

There's also a Youtube video called Finite Simple Group (of Order Two), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTby_e4-Rhg – Gerry Myerson Jun 16 '18 at 00:38

score 44 · Answer 22 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

44

An application of Poincaré's recurrence theorem to academic administration by Kenneth Meyer is a title that is hard to resist looking into.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:11

Boris Bukh

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This is absolutely hilarious... and only one page long. It's a MUST read. – André Henriques May 03 '11 at 09:14
1

Here's a link that does not require a JSTOR account: https://math.uc.edu/~meyer/Administration.pdf – Akiva Weinberger Jun 02 '16 at 02:32
3

That link didn't work for me, but https://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/ArticlesUL/Academia.pdf did. – Gerry Myerson Jul 26 '17 at 11:39
3

As of 2021 neither of the above links works, but http://www1.mate.polimi.it/~bramanti/caffe/materidere/poincare.htm does. – Michael Lugo Oct 05 '21 at 15:01
Well, guess what. https://marktomforde.com/academic/miscellaneous/images/Academia.pdf – EvgeniyZh Jun 18 '23 at 06:25

roy smith · Answer 23 · 2010-11-06T21:51:28.730

40

I always remember the paper entitled "On groups of order one." It turned out the title referred to groups defined by generators and relations, so the problem was to determine when a set of elements (together with its conjugates) generated a free group. I cannot imagine any mathematician who would not look at this paper to see what it was about.

edited Nov 06 '10 at 21:51

answered Nov 06 '10 at 21:43

roy smith

12,063

score 37 · Answer 24 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

37

The book Free rings and their relations by P.M. Cohn.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:56

Jonas Meyer

7,279

15

+1: I've encountered that book many times during trips to the stacks over the past dozen years or so. Every time I stop and scratch my head. One day I suppose I'll actually read it... – Pete L. Clark Nov 01 '10 at 14:37

score 37 · Answer 25 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

37

Very late addition (August '13) J. J. Sylvester, Thoughts on inverse orthogonal matrices, simultaneous sign-successions and tesselated pavements in two or more colors, with applications to Newton rule, Ornamental tile-work, and the theory of numbers. Phil Mag 34 (1867), 461-475.

This title is unbeatable!

Late addition (March, '13): Long and Wigderson's " How discreet is the discrete log?."

Gale and Shapley's "College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage, " was a great title to a great paper. (link JSTOR)

"Moments in mathematics" Papers from the American Mathematical Society annual meeting held in San Antonio, Tex., January 20–22, 1987. Edited by Henry J. Landau. (Link: Google book)

This is about "moments" in the technical sense but the double meaning of the title is very cute. (There is also a book entitled "great moments in mathematics" with the ordinary meaning of moments.)

About 1-2 decades ago Sylvain Cappell and Shmuel Weinberger planned writing a book called "A piece of the action" about group actions. This is a memorable title but I think the book was not completed.

One obvious: Aigner and Ziegler's Proofs from the book. (Link: WikipediA)

Joel Spencer's title "Six standard deviations suffice." is also memorable. (Link: JSTOR)

Jack Edmonds',(1965) "Paths, Trees and Flowers". (Link: ps file.)

For some reasons I found the title "Defect Sauer results" of a paper by Bollobas and Radcliffe memorable. (Link)

Branko Grunbaum has a paper entiled "The importance of being straight" (I could not find a link), and Irit Dinur and Shmuel Safra have a paper entitled "On the importance of being biased". (A link to a later version with a different title.) (There is a paper by A. Dillof published in Michigan Law Review with very similar name.)

Jorg Wills had a memorable title "decomposable skeleta" for a paper he sent for the 100th birthday of a well known mathematician. But I think at the end he changed the title.

Saharon Shelah has several memorable titles like this one: "On what I do not understand (and have something to say). I" .Although, I forgot the most memorable one.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:24

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 00:56

Gil Kalai

24,218

12

If you forgot it (last sentence), it couldn't have been the most memorable! :-) Maybe "The last forcing standing"? – Joseph O'Rourke Nov 01 '10 at 01:03
It is a real shame if the one involving skeleta got its title changed! – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Nov 01 '10 at 03:18
1

You may be thinking of "You can enter Cantor's paradise". It is also worth mentioning that Shelah numbers his publications, and reserves special numbers for significant papers. Paper 666 is the one you mentioned. – Andrés E. Caicedo Nov 01 '10 at 03:19
Well, I thought about a paper where the title or part of it was "Why am I happy". But I couldn't find it. – Gil Kalai Nov 01 '10 at 06:06
I think giving the number 666 to that particular paper was not Saharon Shelah's idea but Andrzej Roslanowski's. Andrzej was (and probably still is) in charge of maintaining the Shelah archive. – Andreas Blass Nov 01 '10 at 13:36
3

I think "Why I am so happy" was the title of an abstract by Shelah, but the paper probably got a more serious title (involving the "main gap"). – Andreas Blass Nov 03 '10 at 19:37
9

The Shela very nice title "On what I do not understand (and have something to say)" It is useful for some (including myself) to know that it is a reference to Wittgenstein quote:
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"
– Jérôme JEAN-CHARLES Nov 05 '10 at 19:21
Really nice find about Sylvester's title! – Suvrit Aug 15 '13 at 19:08
1

"There is also a book entitled 'great moments in mathematics' with the ordinary meaning of moments." Actually, there are two, by Howard Eves; one is called Great Moments in Mathematics Before 1650, the other, Great Moments in Mathematics After 1650. I'm still waiting for the third volume, Great Moments in Mathematics During 1650. – Gerry Myerson Jul 21 '20 at 02:37

score 37 · Answer 26 · edited Jul 21 '22 at 10:11

37

Here is a list of papers in Theoretical Computer Science with cute titles. Some that I like from the list (aside from "Mick gets some" which is good enough to deserve its own answer anyway).

A Smaller Sleeping Bag for a Baby Snake
The Art of Pointless Thinking: a Student's Guide to the Category of Locales
Scott is not always sober

Also: Mangoes and Blueberries.

And in a similar vein, a quote from "Quotients homophone des groupes libres - Homophonic quotients of free groups," that appears on the first linked page page: "Ah, la recherche! Du temps perdu."

edited Jul 21 '22 at 10:11

Glorfindel

2,743

answered Nov 01 '10 at 12:45

Louigi Addario-Berry

4,902

14

+1 for mentioning that last dazzling paper – Georges Elencwajg Nov 01 '10 at 12:49
1

The last phrase of "Scott is not always sober": $\underline{\text{Acrostic}}$ apologies, in conclusion, to Dana Scott for the wholly unjustified slur on his good name in the title of this article. – მამუკა ჯიბლაძე Jan 05 '21 at 19:30

score 37 · Answer 27 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

37

"I know I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque" by Gady Kozma and Ariel Yadin (https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.4258)

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Dec 28 '10 at 20:41

Marcin Kotowski

3,301

8

You should have informed a certain user on this site about this, and let them post it. – Steven Gubkin Mar 04 '11 at 13:49

score 33 · Answer 28 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

33

"Holey Sheets" - Pfaffians and Subdeterminants as D-brane Operators in Large N Gauge Theories.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:23

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 06:15

Alon Amit

6,414

3

Now I want to read this one! :D – J. M. isn't a mathematician Nov 01 '10 at 07:49

score 31 · Answer 29 · edited Aug 06 '22 at 11:33

31

Integrity of ghosts, by Gert Almkvist.

Gert Almkvist's generalization of a mistake by Bourbaki, by Doron Zeilberger. (And a few more by the same author.)

The Point of Pointless Topology, by Peter Johnstone.

The absolute classic: Go To Statement Considered Harmful, by Edsger Dijkstra.

edited Aug 06 '22 at 11:33

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 23:39

darij grinberg

33,095

Memorable, but that last one is a computer science paper... – J. M. isn't a mathematician Nov 01 '10 at 00:15
12

$\mathrm{ComputerScience}\subset\mathrm{Math}$. – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Nov 01 '10 at 03:18
7

Mariano, the Library of Congress agrees with you, QA76 $\subset$ QA. – Gerry Myerson Nov 01 '10 at 11:41
Dang, I was about to go post "The Point of Pointless Topology." Anyway, I'd give you +1 for for the Dijkstra paper alone – David White May 04 '11 at 16:43
3

"Disturbing the Dyson Conjecture (in a GOOD Way)" by Andrew V. Sills and Doron Zeilberger (Exp. Math. 15 (2006), 187-191) is especially GOOD. (To whom it concerns, "Good" is for "Jack Good", a combinatorialist.) – Wadim Zudilin Jul 11 '11 at 13:48

score 31 · Answer 30 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:22

31

There are not exactly five objects by Andreas Blass

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:22

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 04 '10 at 00:10

Neil Strickland

55,003

OK, now I'm wondering, does anyone know what Morley's solution for the p=5 case was? – Harry Altman Nov 04 '10 at 02:18
16

I learned later that "my" proof had actually been published earlier by Kenneth Appel. I can't find any record of what Morley's 1977 proof was, but later, in 1984, Morley sent me a short formula that does the job (for arbitrary primes): $\forall x_0\dots x_{p-1},\exists t_0\dots t_{p-1} \bigwedge_{\sigma\in p^p}\big((\bigwedge_{i=0}^{p-1}t_i=x_{\sigma(i)})\to x_{F_0(\sigma)}=x_{F_1(\sigma)}\big)$ where $F_0,F_1:p^p\to p$ are chosen so that for all $\sigma$, $F_0(\sigma)\neq F_1(\sigma)$ and if $\sigma$ is not one-to-one, then $\sigma(F_1(\sigma))=\sigma(F_0(\sigma))$. – Andreas Blass Nov 04 '10 at 17:02
See also https://mathoverflow.net/questions/416648/how-hard-is-it-to-say-not-exactly-p-with-a-horn-sentence – Emil Jeřábek Jan 03 '23 at 15:23

score 29 · Answer 31 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:48

29

Atiyah's K-Theory and Reality

answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:48

José Figueroa-O'Farrill

32,811

John D. Cook · Answer 32 · 2010-11-01T01:18:37.960

27

H=W

It's a paper showing that two methods of defining Sobolev spaces, one which uses H's with subscripts and superscripts and one that uses W's, give rise to the same spaces.

Thanks to Willie Wong for the following:

Citation information

@ARTICLE{MeySer1964,
  author = {Meyers, Norman G. and Serrin, James},
  title = {{H = W}},
  journal = {Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA},
  year = {1964},
  volume = {51},
  pages = {1055-1056},
  number = {6},
  file = {MeySer1964.pdf:MeySer1964.pdf:PDF},
  owner = {ww278},
  timestamp = {2010.05.03},
  url = {http://www.pnas.org/content/51/6/1055.short}
}

edited Nov 01 '10 at 01:18

answered Oct 31 '10 at 22:11

John D. Cook

5,147

I added the citation info, since this is CW, I just pasted it in, hope you don't mind. – Willie Wong Oct 31 '10 at 22:34
(BTW, this was also the first thing that came to mind when I read the title of this question.) – Willie Wong Oct 31 '10 at 22:35
Even shorter, at least in print, is $c_p$ by C.A. McCarthy (Israel. J. Math. 5, 249--271 (1967)), about the Schatten classes.. – Dirk Werner Oct 20 '20 at 20:17

score 26 · Answer 33 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:21

26

I'm quite surprised that no one has mentioned The Joy of Sets by Keith Devlin.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:21

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 02 '10 at 11:17

Peter Humphries

8,179

7

Ah, that's what "The Joy of Cats" (a category theory book) referred to. – darij grinberg Nov 03 '10 at 11:48
9

Actually both book are spin on a famous book by Alex Comfort. Either way, the first edition of "The Joy of Cats" dealt with its theme very nicely. There were many illustrations featuring cats. – Michael Greinecker Nov 03 '10 at 11:57
13

In fact, the Alex Comfort book was based on Irma Rombauer’s classic cookbook “The Joy of Cooking”, from 1931. As far as I know, this meme goes back no further… – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Nov 18 '10 at 01:19
4

Michael Spivak has published a book in this vein about typesetting. – Neal Jul 20 '20 at 22:49
1

I would be certain that the name was hinting at this 1972 book – Pedro Sánchez Terraf Mar 19 '21 at 22:29

score 25 · Answer 34 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:20

25

Homotopy Algebras are Homotopy Algebras by Martin Markl

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:20

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 17:01

Vít Tuček

8,159

monodromy · Answer 35 · 2010-12-31T00:40:14.637

24

J.-M. FONTAINE Il n'y a pas de variété abélienne sur Z Invent. Math. (1985) 81, 515-538

edited Dec 31 '10 at 00:40

answered Dec 30 '10 at 23:36

monodromy

776

score 23 · Answer 36 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:20

You'd think that with John H. Conway around, this should be like shooting fish in a barrel. One title that comes to mind is

The Sensual (Quadratic) Form

and there are more goodies if you look at his bibliography. For example,

Character Calisthenics

or

The $\sqrt{\text{Monster}}$ Construction

I also like the paper (both the title and the contents!) by Andreas Blass,

Seven Trees in One

score 20 · Answer 37 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:20

20

OK, fine... I'll confess I could not resist downloading from the arxiv the paper Act globally, compute locally: group actions, fixed points, and localization. I don't know if it quite fits the question though, since I never read it (beyond the first couple of pages). It's just way too far outside of my main interests.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:20

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 14:49

Thierry Zell

4,536

score 20 · Answer 38 · answered Nov 04 '10 at 08:37

20

Todd's "The 'odd' number six."

answered Nov 04 '10 at 08:37

Maxime Bourrigan

548

score 20 · Answer 39 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:18

20

The book Why Knot? by Colin Adams.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:18

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Jul 11 '11 at 13:43

Wadim Zudilin

13,404

Who is the author? – Gjergji Zaimi Jul 11 '11 at 13:48
That was a good question! I am far from the business but saw the title on a desk of a colleague in Bonn about 4 years ago. The title was easily memorizable but not the name. I googled the latter... – Wadim Zudilin Jul 11 '11 at 13:57
There's also a set of notes for a knot theory course by Justin Roberts, called "Knot Knotes". – Marco Golla Aug 23 '11 at 11:55

score 20 · Answer 40 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 10:34

20

I've always enjoyed the poetry of the title:

"Period three implies chaos" -- T.-Y. Li & J. A. Yorke

answered Aug 23 '11 at 10:34

Brendan Foreman

386

Although, with the usual definition of chaos, period three doesn't imply it. – Gerry Myerson Jul 21 '20 at 02:42

score 19 · Answer 41 · answered Aug 13 '20 at 02:22

19

At some point in time the Erdős collaboration graph did not contain an (induced) $K_5$, but it did contain a $K_5$ with one edge missing. Someone showed me a paper with a title something like "The Erdős graph contains a $K_5$," written by the two authors that formed the missing edge. The rest of the paper was blank, since the names of the authors were sufficient to prove the statement of the title. Not really a memorable title per se, but it becomes quite memorable when the authors are included. I couldn't find any mention of this paper on the web, however.

answered Aug 13 '20 at 02:22

Richard Stanley

49,238

3

Something like this was posted as a math joke to reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/MathJokes/comments/gebnnl/5_mathematicians_coauthor_a_paper_titled_the/ – Gerry Myerson Mar 05 '21 at 02:30
1

Surely it would have also needed a bibliography? – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Aug 06 '21 at 09:39

David Roberts · Answer 42 · 2021-10-05T05:28:50.373

Andrew Stacey and Sarah Whitehouse, The hunting of the Hopf ring, Homology, Homotopy and Applications, Vol. 11 (2009), No. 2, pp.75-132. doi:10.4310/HHA.2009.v11.n2.a6, arXiv:0711.3722

referencing this poem. Much more memorable than the related works by the same authors:

Andrew Stacey and Sarah Whitehouse, Tall-Wraith monoids, arXiv:1102.3549
Andrew Stacey and Sarah Whitehouse, Stable and unstable operations in mod $p$ cohomology theories, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 8(2) (2008), 1059–1091, doi:10.2140/agt.2008.8.1059, arXiv:math/0605471

score 19 · Answer 43 · answered Nov 16 '10 at 04:54

19

Addictive Number Theory, by Melvyn B. Nathanson.

answered Nov 16 '10 at 04:54

Mariano Suárez-Álvarez

46,795

3

This is the title of the introductory chapter to Additive Number Theory: Festschrift in Honor of the Sixtieth Birthday of Melvyn B Nathanson. – Gerry Myerson Nov 16 '10 at 06:26

score 19 · Answer 44 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

19

"Fun with $\mathbb{F}_{1}$"

https://arxiv.org/abs/0806.2401

Quite a decent pun, I think.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Dec 14 '10 at 20:54

Jon Bannon

6,987
6
68
110

3

i thought this one had already been mentioned long ago? or am i mistaken? – Suvrit Dec 14 '10 at 21:23
1

It gets mentioned in a comment to this answer: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/44326/most-memorable-titles/44377#44377 – Yemon Choi Dec 31 '10 at 00:26

score 19 · Answer 45 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:41

19

"The 40 billionth binary digit of pi is 1", D. Bailey and P. Borwein.

answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:41

Andrew T. Barker

271
2
6

score 18 · Answer 46 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

18

"Footnote To a Note of Davenport and Heilbronn" by J. W. S. Cassels.

https://jlms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s1-36/1/177.extract

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:30

Micah Milinovich

5,017

1

I'm afraid I don't get it. It's a nice paper, certainly, but what's memorable about the title? – Pete L. Clark Oct 31 '10 at 17:43
13

Perhaps it is because "footnote to a note" makes one imagine the entire paper as written in a tiny, tiny font? – Daniel Litt Oct 31 '10 at 22:43
1

Or that the entire paper is a footnote? – adamo Nov 01 '10 at 11:55
12

@adamo: Two students in our institute wrote their master thesis based on a book written with typewriter in which a footnote roughly in the middle never ended and became the main text. – j.p. Nov 03 '10 at 20:57
3

Nabokov's novel, Pale Fire, is mostly footnotes. – Gerry Myerson Jul 21 '20 at 03:18
I've noticed that such (fake?) modest titles such as "A remark on..." where quite common at that time. This might have be a mockery of this fashion, assuming this purported to be a joke. – YCor Jun 01 '21 at 09:56

score 18 · Answer 47 · answered Nov 06 '10 at 22:39

18

Lovasz's "Hit and Run Is Fast and Fun". In that he proved the hit run algorithm on sampling from log concave distributions on a convex set in the Euclidean space has a polynomial mixing time, hence fast.

answered Nov 06 '10 at 22:39

John Jiang

4,354

score 18 · Answer 48 · edited Aug 06 '22 at 11:35

My memory is marked by the titles of two papers by Branko Grünbaum:

Branko Grünbaum. `Are your polyhedra the same as my polyhedra?' Discrete and comput. Geom.: the Goodman-Pollack Festschrift, ed. B. Aronov et al, Springer (2003), pp. 461-488.
Branko Grünbaum. `The Bilinski Dodecahedron and Assorted Parallelohedra, Zonohedra, Monohedra, Isozonohedra, and Otherhedra'. The Mathematical Intelligencer (2010). DOI: 10.1007/s00283-010-9138-7.

The first title is easy for me to recall whenever I need to refer to the paper. The second title sounds fancy (though the article itself is not) and, more importantly, is unpronounceable by me, therefore I have put some stretch of mental effort into memorising it.

As to the original question---What makes the title of a paper memorable?---, personally, when I look for things to read, my attention tends to be captured by titles that are short and sweet, for instance, Jean-Pierre Serre's Trees, Ken Brown's Buildings. These monographs/papers usually turn out to be the authoritative treaties of the topics, with material unforgettable for one working in the field.

Books were writ by Archimedes, but only Serre could call one Trees. — Gerry Myerson, Nov 23 '22 at 23:32

score 17 · Answer 49 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

17

Approximately counting up to four, by Luby and Vigoda.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:19

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 11:50

slimton

393

score 17 · Answer 50 · answered Nov 03 '10 at 19:19

17

Paul Halmos' Applied Mathematics is Bad Mathematics is certainly a memorable title, notwithstanding the wrong-headedness of what at least superficially appears to be its thesis.

answered Nov 03 '10 at 19:19

Michael Hardy

11,922
11
81
119

score 16 · Answer 51 · answered Nov 02 '10 at 10:05

16

I don't think $\textbf{L'endoscopie tordue n'est pas si tordue}$ (Twisted endoscopy is not so twisted) de J.-L. Waldspurger has been mentioned yet.

answered Nov 02 '10 at 10:05

Olivier

10,252

score 16 · Answer 52 · answered Nov 04 '10 at 01:27

16

Ben Andrews' : "Gauss curvature flow: the fate of the rolling stones"

answered Nov 04 '10 at 01:27

Richard Wentworth

231

score 16 · Answer 53 · answered May 08 '11 at 22:40

One of my favorite titles from control theory is a 1978 paper by John Doyle entitled "Guaranteed Margins for LQG Regulators." It is memorable because of the abstract "There are none." The paper shows that optimal controls may be fragile; the 3-word abstract says it all.

score 15 · Answer 54 · answered Mar 05 '21 at 02:07

How often should you beat your kids?, by Don Zagier. The conclusion is that you should beat your kids every day except Sunday!

The word "beat" in this context means to defeat your child in a certain card guessing game, which the paper shows that you will win with asymptotic probability $\frac12+\frac1{2\sqrt{2}}\approx\frac{6}7$, hence six days out of seven.

Despite the intentionally shocking title, the paper is quite a good read!

score 15 · Answer 55 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:13

15

On the Dreaded Right Bousfield Localization by C. Barwick.

answered Oct 31 '10 at 15:13

Harry Gindi

19,374

score 15 · Answer 56 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:11

15

Ideals and reality

projective modules and number of generators of ideals

By Friedrich Ischebeck and Ravi A. Rao

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:11

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 05:29

Idoneal

1,620

score 15 · Answer 57 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:10

There are some rather obvious aspects to the question that perhaps should be mentioned.

"For a large number of readers, the choice whether they select to read a paper or not is often strongly influenced by the title."

Yes, but it is also strongly influenced by the abstract and introduction.

"I was wondering if the MO-users would be willing to share their wisdom with me on what makes the title of a paper memorable for them; or perhaps just cite an example of title they find memorable?"

Since most answers refereed to the second part, perhaps it is worth answering the first part of the question as well. Perhaps the main thing that makes the title (and paper) memorable is the content of the paper.

"This advice would be very helpful in helping me (and perhaps others) in designing better, more informative titles (not only for papers, but also for example, for MO questions)."

Overall, the reaction in the mathematics community to catchy titles, personal descriptions, jokes of various kind, and various other things that can be seen as PR-related or "salesmanship" are mixed. So while it is always good to have a clear title having an overly catchy title can also backfire.

I think given the papers that I have seen being cited here, a conservative moral might be: the more powerful the content (or the writer) of the paper, the bolder the title one may select. More important to me is to figure out a good balance between catchyness, precision, and informativeness. I would not want to sacrifice the latter two in favor of the first one, unless I had a breakthrough result. — Suvrit, Nov 05 '10 at 16:51
I would put it more strongly: if you are in the position that the community won't mind your papers having catchy titles, then you probably aren't reading MO to get advice. — Arend Bayer, Nov 05 '10 at 18:25

score 15 · Answer 58 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:12

15

Street-Fighting Mathematics by Sanjoy Mahajan is about estimation, Fermi calculations, dimensional analysis and so on.

I haven't read it yet, but the title was certainly enough to get me to download it.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:12

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 07 '10 at 06:59

Max

506

The link you provide doesn't work. can you, please, fix it? – Sasha Patotski Aug 17 '13 at 15:52

score 15 · Answer 59 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:12

15

From the top of my head comes the papers

Domination When The Stars Are Out, D Hermelin, M Mnich, EJ van Leeuwen, G Woeginger
Looking At The Stars, E Prieto & C Sloper
Leftovers from the Ham Sandwich Theorem, G Byrnes, G Cairns and B Jessup

But also, Cox & Zucker, who in Intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces creates the algorithm later named the Cox-Zucker machine

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:12

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered May 08 '11 at 14:12

Pål GD

136

1

Great one :) ${}$ – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez May 08 '11 at 22:26

score 14 · Answer 60 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 18:58

Noone beats Mick gets some (the odds are on his side) by V. Chvatal and B. Reed. It is an article about the satisfiability problem, and the title is of course referring to this song. I havn't read the article, and the only reason I know the it is its title.

score 14 · Answer 61 · edited Oct 05 '21 at 05:27

14

There was the fuss about The Yellow Cake, a joint paper of Saharon Shelah and Andrzej Roslanowski. (Wayback Machine)

They also co-authored several other funnily titled papers, amongst them are such names as:

edited Oct 05 '21 at 05:27

David Roberts

33,851

answered May 08 '11 at 14:59

Asaf Karagila

38,140

4

How can we talk about sweetness without mentioning Saccharinity? http://shelah.logic.at/files/859.pdf :) – Haim May 09 '11 at 08:17
Hello hello, this is a test! – Asaf Karagila Oct 20 '21 at 20:22

score 13 · Answer 62 · answered Nov 01 '10 at 19:00

Fractured Fractals And Broken Dreams. Self-similar Geometry through Metric and Measure. Guy David, Stephen Semmes.

http://www.oup.com.au/titles/academic/maths/9780198501664

This is the most unusual title of a book which I have ever come across. I discovered this while randomly browsing through books in the library and got hooked. I was an undergraduate then and it had a strange attraction to me, even though I could not figure out anything that was written in it then.

I was not the only one!

Our university used to put out a list of courses (in the good old days) which were going to be offered and students would choose from it. Some of us managed to add the name of this book against the fractal geometry course as a course material. A record number of students enlisted.

Within a week a record number of them wanted to opt out. So there were inquiries: it turned out most of the students cited that they found the title of the book mentioned in the course material attractive which prompted them to enlist.

(We had found in the previous year that the instructor did not care about teaching, insist on taking class at 8 in the morning and would religiously take attendance for 10 minutes, by the end of the class half the class would be snoring. The assignments were to be submitted on A4 paper, we were supposed to write on one side with appropriate margin.

It was a case of a pun / warning which had gone horribly wrong. )

Stephen Semmes has a real gift for choosing titles for books. Two other ones : "Where the Buffalo Roam : Infinite Processes and Infinite Complexity" (posted here : http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0302308) and "A graphic apology for symmetry and implicitness" (written w/ Alessandra Carbone). — Andy Putman, Nov 01 '10 at 19:42

score 13 · Answer 63 · answered Dec 07 '10 at 00:39

13

How to Gamble If You Must by Lester E. Dubins & Leonard J. Savage

answered Dec 07 '10 at 00:39

Gerald Edgar

40,238

score 13 · Answer 64 · answered May 05 '11 at 19:58

13

The weird and wonderful chemistry of audioactive decay, by John Conway.

answered May 05 '11 at 19:58

Abhinav Kumar

3,025

I've always wanted to read this paper, but I can't find it anywhere. – Ryan Reich May 06 '11 at 03:22
1

J.H. Conway, The weird and wonderful chemistry of audioactive decay, in: Open Problems in Communication and Computation, T.M. Cover and B. Gopinath, eds., Springer, 1987, pp. 173–188. If your library doesn't have it, get it through interlibrary loan. – Todd Trimble May 08 '11 at 15:17

Tom Goodwillie · Answer 65 · 2011-08-23T23:23:18.657

13

Speaking of Milnor and such things, have we already done [Edit: Kervaire-Milnor's] "Groups of Homotopy Spheres"?

edited Aug 23 '11 at 23:23

answered May 08 '11 at 21:26

Tom Goodwillie

54,421

That's is a really lovely title. – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Jul 11 '11 at 15:23
+1; In his Abel lecture, Mike Hopkins remarks that Milnor's papers often have this kind of elegant concision: The title almost says it all and by the time you end the first paragraph, you have already learnt a couple of mind-blowing theorems and/or conjectures...
(BTW, maybe your answer should at least mention the late Kervaire...)
– Maxime Bourrigan Aug 23 '11 at 22:35

score 13 · Answer 66 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:07

13

“Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics” by Bob Coecke / arXiv:quant-ph/0510032v1

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:07

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Jul 11 '11 at 15:02

Artem Pelenitsyn

101

score 12 · Answer 67 · answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:27

12

Al Capone and the Death Ray by R. C. Lyness

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:27

Ira Gessel

1

3

Wow. If you have access to JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3606559 – Gil Kalai Nov 04 '10 at 15:47
1

The abstract says, in part, "After illustrating some of the methods by which difficult-looking results can be obtained simply, I shall obtain a simple-looking result with difficulty and ask for an easier way of getting it." – Gerry Myerson Jul 26 '17 at 11:32

score 12 · Answer 68 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:09

12

Simmons, F. W., When Homogeneous Continua Are Hausdorff Circles (or Yes, We Hausdorff Bananas), Continua, Decompositions, and Manifolds, University of Texas Press (1980) pp. 62-73. I think it's a reference to this song.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:09

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 19:21

Qiaochu Yuan

114,941

score 12 · Answer 69 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:09

12

I always like the title "Homology flows, cohomology cuts" by Chambers, Erickson and Nayyeri, which makes analog (a general technique indeed) to the well-known theorem (for graph theorists) "Maximum flows, minimum cuts".

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:09

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 02:34

Hsien-Chih Chang 張顯之

1,250

score 12 · Answer 70 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:10

12

A Tale of Two Sieves by Carl Pomerance

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:10

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Jan 31 '11 at 00:42

score 12 · Answer 71 · answered Jan 31 '11 at 05:48

12

De Weger and Pinter wrote this paper entitled:

$$210 = 14 \times 15 = 5 \times 6 \times 7 = \binom{21}{2} = \binom{10}{4}$$

answered Jan 31 '11 at 05:48

James Weigandt

3,208

. . . which reminds me that $\displaystyle \binom{3003}1 = \binom{78} 2 = \binom{15} 5 = \binom {14} 6. \qquad$ – Michael Hardy Jul 21 '20 at 01:01

score 11 · Answer 72 · edited Sep 08 '19 at 03:36

11

I like Cliff Taubes's simple titles: "Gr -> SW", "SW -> Gr", and "SW = Gr". (Okay, they each also have a subtitle, but the first part is enough to tell the reader exactly what the paper is about.)

edited Sep 08 '19 at 03:36

Praphulla Koushik

5,921

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:56

Spiro Karigiannis

3,489

17

They tell the reader who is familiar with the subject. I cannot even tell what subject they are about. – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Oct 31 '10 at 17:20
3

That's true, but I figured any readers looking at papers by that particular author would know what they're about. And everyone in this field certainly knows that author, so there would never be any confusion. – Spiro Karigiannis Oct 31 '10 at 18:33

Andy Putman · Answer 73 · 2010-11-01T20:01:55.060

The following is not quite as arresting as the other titles listed, but Stallings has a paper in Inventiones entitled "The topology of finite graphs". It's a pretty gutsy title, but what's even more impressive is that it is a fairly good description of what the paper contains (namely, a totally new approach to studying questions about subgroups of free groups using finite graphs; this is totally different from the classical approach using covering spaces of graphs)!

score 11 · Answer 74 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:04

11

Bob Thomason's "Beware the Phony Multiplication on Quillen's $A^{-1}A$".

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:04

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 02 '10 at 14:10

Steven Landsburg

22,477

1

I wanted to post this but I kept forgetting until I was somewhere without Mathscinet http://www.jstor.org/stable/2043425?origin=crossref – Sean Tilson Nov 03 '10 at 23:54

score 11 · Answer 75 · answered Nov 04 '10 at 00:05

11

Theorems for free! by Philip Wadler

From the abstract: ... This provides a free source of useful theorems, courtesy of Reynolds' abstraction theorem for the polymorphic lambda calculus.

answered Nov 04 '10 at 00:05

Peter Arndt

12,033

score 11 · Answer 76 · answered Nov 17 '10 at 23:00

11

"What is infinity factorial (and why might we care)?"

The only downside is that it isn't actually typed up, but rather is hand-written and scanned, but the result of $\infty! = \sqrt{2\pi}$ is still rather intriguing.

answered Nov 17 '10 at 23:00

Gabriel Benamy

487

Karl Schwede · Answer 77 · 2011-05-08T19:03:17.610

11

Here are a few that jump to my mind.

Young person's guide to canonical singularities by Miles Reid, 1985.

Twenty-five years of 3-folds—an old person's view by Miles Reid, 2000.

Tendencious survey of 3-folds, by Miles Reid, 1985 (same book, Bowdoin -- Algebraic Geometry, as the first one).

On the ubiquity of Gorenstein rings by Hyman Bass, 1963. This also seems to be the first paper with the word ubiquity in the title (via a mathscinet search).

Another one that jumps to my mind is the various Pathologies papers of Mumford.

edited May 08 '11 at 19:03

answered May 08 '11 at 16:55

Karl Schwede

20,257

A little late: When I was recent PhD (about 40 years ago), I wrote a paper, Propinquity of Gorenstein rings (referring to some classes of Gorenstein subrings being close together), answering a question in ... ubiquity .... The paper was accepted by Hy, and appeared in JPAA. Subsequently, I found out that the question had already been answered, by Sally. So I thought about writing a paper entitled Iniquity of Gorenstein rings, but couldn't find any suitable results. – David Handelman Dec 19 '17 at 18:31
I notice that 'tendencious' is in the original, not a typo here. Is this some pun (as compared to the usual spelling 'tendentious')? – LSpice Jun 26 '19 at 16:36

score 11 · Answer 78 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:08

11

You can find in Serre's Œuvres (volume IV) an article titled $\Delta = b^2 - 4ac$. (Wayback Machine)

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:08

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Aug 23 '11 at 20:26

Maxime Bourrigan

548

score 10 · Answer 79 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:04

10

Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Dr Daina Taimina (A K Peters), see

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/114989-crocheting-adventures-wins-diagram-2009.html (Wayback Machine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookseller/Diagram_Prize_for_Oddest_Title_of_the_Year

http://hyperbolic-crochet.blogspot.com/

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:04

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 17:04

Will Jagy

25,349

Gerald Edgar · Answer 80 · 2020-07-23T14:25:19.423

10

Great Expectations: The Theory of Optimal Stopping,
Yuan Shih Chow, Herbert Ellis Robbins, David Siegmund
Houghton Mifflin, 1971

edited Jul 23 '20 at 14:25

answered Nov 01 '10 at 01:25

Gerald Edgar

40,238

score 10 · Answer 81 · edited Jan 23 '14 at 20:55

10

Not math, but Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow is hard to beat

edited Jan 23 '14 at 20:55

Erel Segal-Halevi

3,585

answered Nov 10 '10 at 05:00

Ross Millikan

346

1

It's not a title, though, is it? Do I foresee a new question about memorable lists of authors? – Gerry Myerson Nov 10 '10 at 05:08
11

That one is sort of a cruel example, as it was due to Gamow's sense of humor that Bethe was invited; he did not even have anything to do with it. Alpher was just a student at the time and felt afterwards that his contribution was drowned out by the bigshot names. (This is all just paraphrased from the Wikipedia article.) – Ryan Reich Nov 16 '10 at 11:17

score 10 · Answer 82 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:03

10

Another one: MR1274760 (95d:30040) Carleson, Lennart(S-RIT); Jones, Peter W.(1-YALE); Yoccoz, Jean-Christophe(F-PARIS11) Julia and John. (English summary) Bol. Soc. Brasil. Mat. (N.S.) 25 (1994), no. 1, 1–30.

The preprint wad even more memorable title: In Carleson and Gamelin's book on complex dynamics it was referred to as: When is Julia John?

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:03

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered May 02 '11 at 19:36

Margaret Friedland

3,659

score 9 · Answer 83 · answered Dec 28 '10 at 20:32

I hope it is OK to mention "A Disorienting Look at Euler's Theorem on the Axis of a Rotation" even if I am a joint author, particularly if I admit that none of the authors thought up the cute title---it was the editor. (The cute part is the somewhat subtle use of "disorienting", namely we prove Euler's Theorem for orthogonal transformations that are not proper---i.e., don't preserve orientation.) You can download it here:

http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3542&pf=1

score 9 · Answer 84 · answered Dec 29 '10 at 01:30

9

I have always found the book title "Prolegomena to a Middlebrow Arithmetic of Curves of Genus 2" by Cassels and Flynn to be quite memorable.

answered Dec 29 '10 at 01:30

Douglas Bowman

356

score 9 · Answer 85 · answered Apr 06 '11 at 15:42

9

A mathematical theory of the guillotine, by Plero Villaggio, Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis (1990) Vol. 110, pp 93-101.

answered Apr 06 '11 at 15:42

Denis Serre

51,599

Jon Bannon · Answer 86 · 2020-07-24T14:04:59.827

8

Andrew Ranicki and the late John Roe were writing

Surgery for Amateurs

A spectacularly funny title, I think.

The incomplete, but very nice, notes can be found online. Thanks again to Nigel Higson for his lovely talk remembering John Roe in the UK Virtual Operator Algebras Seminar.

edited Jul 24 '20 at 14:04

answered Jul 23 '20 at 11:14

Jon Bannon

6,987
6
68
110

2

Does "Virtual" modify "Operator", or "Algebra", or "Seminar"? – Gerry Myerson Jul 23 '20 at 22:29
1

@Gerry Myerson: the seminar is virtual, not the operator algebras. :) – Jon Bannon Jul 24 '20 at 14:04

score 8 · Answer 87 · answered Jul 23 '20 at 11:29

8

However the question is about papers but it is worth mentioning the title of Ketonen's PhD thesis: "Everything You Wanted to Know About Ultrafilters But Were Afraid to Ask" !

answered Jul 23 '20 at 11:29

Rahman. M

2,341

score 8 · Answer 88 · edited Feb 16 '24 at 22:27

Kevin Buchin, Maike Buchin, Christian Knauer, Günter Rote, Carola Wenk, How Difficult is it to Walk the Dog?, In: Abstracts of the 23rd European Workshop on Computational Geometry, Graz, March 2007, pp. 170-173.

"Walking the dog" refers to finding parametrizations $a : [0,1]\to C$ and $b : [0,1]\to D$ of two curves $C$ and $D$ such that $\max_{t\in[0,1]} \|a(t) - b(t)\|$ is as small as possible -- or at least smaller than a given cutoff value. The metaphor is a person walking along curve $C$ while keeping a dog on a leash walking along curve $D$. The famous "simultaneous mountain climbers" puzzle has a cameo.

score 8 · Answer 89 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:02

8

Finding even sets even faster.

The last fraction of a fractional conjecture.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:02

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Dec 14 '10 at 18:30

Andrew D. King

1,814

score 8 · Answer 90 · edited Jan 01 '12 at 05:43

8

There's an algebra book called "Rings and Ideals". I thought of a subtitle: "Marriage during the Revolution".

I remember reading Jacobson's "Basic Algebra I" on the bus on the way to university, and someone noticing it and thinking it was a high-school level text.

Similarly, Serre(?) has a difficult book about number theory, titled simply "Arithmetic".

edited Jan 01 '12 at 05:43

Andrés E. Caicedo

32,193
5
130
233

answered Dec 15 '10 at 00:52

none

19

+1 for the subtitle. This reminds the course given by C. Foias in Orsay: Contractions et dilatations, which could have been given in the Department of Obstetrics.
However, I regret the adjective difficult. Jean-Pierre (=?) wrote a concise book, which is so usefull that it is still used by our students after fifty years.
– Denis Serre Apr 06 '11 at 15:32
4

In the same vein of elementary-looking books, Weil's Basic Number Theory is unbeatable. – lhf Apr 06 '11 at 17:38
2

And what about Lurie's Higher Algebra? – ACL Jun 15 '11 at 06:40

score 7 · Answer 91 · answered Jan 23 '22 at 15:23

7

On the more applied side of things, I'm quite fond of the following (sub)title:

Estimating the number of unseen species: A bird in the hand is worth $\log n$ in the bush

answered Jan 23 '22 at 15:23

user32157

337

score 7 · Answer 92 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:01

7

Ancestors, Cardinals, and Representatives by T. D. Parsons.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:01

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Nov 01 '10 at 20:05

Michael Hardy

11,922
11
81
119

1

Could the (apparently anonymous at this time) person who voted this one down explain their rationale? This posting is similar in content to many of those above that were voted up. – Michael Hardy Nov 03 '10 at 12:49

score 7 · Answer 93 · answered Nov 17 '10 at 21:39

I just saw the very curious title:

An Operator-Like Description of Love Affairs

by: Fabio Bagarello and Francesco Oliveri SIAM J. Appl. Math. Volume 70, Issue 8, pp. 3235-3251 (2010)

And with the report of this title, I also admit that this title belongs to the category of memorable titles, without first needing to read the paper. The abstract of the paper is also quite curious!

score 7 · Answer 94 · answered May 03 '11 at 06:06

[Smale, Stephen. The story of the higher-dimensional Poincaré conjecture (what actually happened on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro). A joint AMS-MAA invited address presented in Phoenix, Arizona, January 1989. AMS-MAA Joint Lecture Series. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1989. 1 videocassette (NTSC; 1/2 inch; VHS) (60 min.); sd., col. MR1057609 (91g:01035)]

It's a video, but it's Smale, so...

score 7 · Answer 95 · answered May 08 '11 at 19:39

7

On manifolds homeomorphic to the 7-sphere

In which Milnor proves there is more than one.

answered May 08 '11 at 19:39

Jeremy Kahn

987

score 6 · Answer 96 · answered Apr 10 '21 at 11:04

6

The book of Serge Lang: $\mathrm{SL}_2(\Bbb R)$.

Lang, Serge, $\mathrm{SL}_2(\Bbb R)$, Reading, Mass. etc.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. XVI, 428 p. $19.50 (1975). ZBL0311.22001.

answered Apr 10 '21 at 11:04

C.F.G

4,165
5
30
64

9

Serge Lang: Too Real. – Asaf Karagila Apr 10 '21 at 11:21

score 6 · Answer 97 · answered Oct 25 '21 at 01:23

6

A Cohomological Viewpoint on Elementary School Arithmetic

answered Oct 25 '21 at 01:23

Lukas Heger

632

score 6 · Answer 98 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:59

6

Marginalia to a theorem of Silver (see also this link) by Keith I. Devlin and R. B. Jensen, 1975. A humble title and yet, undoubtedly, one of the most important papers of all time in set theory.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:59

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 16:49

Andrés E. Caicedo

32,193
5
130
233

score 6 · Answer 99 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:01

6

I'll echo other comments that the question is wrong-headed, but I think it still serves a purpose.

Comment l'hypothese de Riemann ne fut pas prouvee (How the Riemann hypothesis was not proved), by P Cartier, Seminar on Number Theory, Paris 1980-81, Progr. Math., 22, Boston, MA: Birkhauser Boston, pp. 35-48, MR693308

edited Aug 12 '20 at 19:01

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 20:27

Gerry Myerson

39,024

score 6 · Answer 100 · answered Nov 08 '10 at 07:06

6

Knobel's wonderful paper on the constant rediscovery of iterated exponentials.

R. Knobel. "Exponentials Reiterated." American Mathematical Monthly 88, (1981), p. 235-252.

answered Nov 08 '10 at 07:06

score 6 · Answer 101 · answered Dec 30 '10 at 23:51

6

"A survey of finite differences of opinion on numerical muddling of the incomprehensible defective confusion equation" by B.P. Leonard

answered Dec 30 '10 at 23:51

Michael Renardy

12,836

score 6 · Answer 102 · answered May 05 '11 at 16:55

6

Larry Bates, Monodromy in the champagne bottle.

answered May 05 '11 at 16:55

agt

4,246

score 6 · Answer 103 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 08:31

6

Larry Bates, "You can't get there from here", Differential Geometry and its Applications 8.3 (1998): 273-274

answered Aug 23 '11 at 08:31

agt

4,246

There = a hotel? – Tom Copeland Oct 20 '21 at 17:38

score 5 · Answer 104 · answered Jul 21 '20 at 09:07

5

"K-theory doesn't exist" by Ethan Akin: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022404978900324

answered Jul 21 '20 at 09:07

Mare

25,794

score 5 · Answer 105 · answered Mar 10 '21 at 22:05

Gaetano Fichera's "Avere una memoria tenace crea gravi problemi" [Having a persistent memory creates serious problems], (Italian), Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis 70, 101-112 (1979), MR1553577, Zbl 0425.73002.

The title is a pun to introduce the Author's analysis of time dependent kernels in continuum mechanics: he shows that, while Volterra type kernels (i.e. kernels which are zero before a fixed time $t$ in the past) can be used in the integrodifferential equations of elasticity without affecting existence and uniqueness results involved, the use of general kernels make these results strongly dependent of the topology of the function space on which the problem is posed. The pun is also explained with an analogy at the end of the paper.

score 5 · Answer 106 · answered Apr 15 '21 at 23:08

5

My personal favorite is Elisabetta A. Matsumoto's:

"The Taming of the Screw: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Elliptic Functions"

which can be found here. It is a very good read, and the title extremely seamlessly references both Shakespeare and Dr.Strangelove; two of my favorites.

answered Apr 15 '21 at 23:08

Milo Moses

2,819
10
36

4

And a nod to Henry James as well! – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Aug 06 '21 at 09:36

score 5 · Answer 107 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:58

5

Most colorful:

MR1371379 (97g:60105) Chung, Kai Lai: Green, Brown, and probability. World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc., River Edge, NJ, 1995. xiv+106 pp. ISBN: 981-02-2453-2; 981-02-2533-4

The book discusses connection between potential theory (in particular Green's function for Laplace equation) and probability (in particular Brownian motions).

edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:58

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered May 02 '11 at 19:18

Margaret Friedland

3,659

score 4 · Answer 108 · answered Oct 20 '21 at 17:42

4

Mathematical physics, for the allusion: "The Unbearable Beingness of Light, Dressing and Undressing Photons in Black Hole Spacetimes" by Timothy J. Hollowood, Graham M. Shore

answered Oct 20 '21 at 17:42

Tom Copeland

9,937

1

Hint: Czech writer – Tom Copeland Oct 20 '21 at 22:21
Must read the book or see the movie (PG recommended for the young, preferably nontoxic, sexually secure parents) to understand the full set of puns in the title. – Tom Copeland Nov 05 '21 at 02:15
Ah, the Czech author of "The Unbearable . . ." just passed. Several fine eulogies were given on EU public broadcasting channels. – Tom Copeland Jul 22 '23 at 00:15

score 4 · Answer 109 · answered Nov 01 '10 at 20:09

4

My Ph.D. thesis is titled Why Logical Probabilists Need Real Numbers. (But I haven't published any paper with that title.)

answered Nov 01 '10 at 20:09

Michael Hardy

11,922
11
81
119

And... why do they? – darij grinberg Nov 01 '10 at 21:00
4

Start by thinking of probabilities as belonging to some partially ordered set lacking such amenities as the operations of addition and multiplication. Then under certain assumptions that are reasonable in some epistemic situations, one can show that they might as well be real numbers with the usual order and the usual operations. – Michael Hardy Nov 01 '10 at 22:28
2

Doesn't a PhD thesis count as a paper? – Zsbán Ambrus Dec 05 '10 at 10:51
@Zsbán: Maybe it's a matter of convention. I haven't submitted anything to a journal with this title, but maybe I should have. My thesis contained some big sections explaining some background material to my advisor. I did write a paper on the same general topic with the unexciting title "Scaled Boolean Algebras". – Michael Hardy Dec 05 '10 at 22:23

score 4 · Answer 110 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:52

4

Mathematical Fallacies, Flaws and Flimflam was definitely by far the most memorable title I have ever read. Also A Taste of Topology seemed tasty.

But I would also like to stress, that to me, the books that have the most 'classical' and 'general' titles, seem the most appealing. Eg.

etc.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:52

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Dec 04 '10 at 23:05

Leo

1,579

score 4 · Answer 111 · answered Dec 14 '10 at 21:48

4

One title I delight in having on my bookshelf is "Introduction to Group Characters" by Walter Ledermann - if you know it's a maths book the title makes complete sense. But a non-mathematician imagines a completely different kind of content.

answered Dec 14 '10 at 21:48

Mark Bennet

276

11

There's a Wikipdia article titled ''group action''. What must the lay reader expect it to be about? – Michael Hardy Dec 29 '10 at 02:11
5

Reminds my of books with titles like "Theory of normal families". I've been told that one of these could be found in the "social sciences" section the university library in Bremen... – Dirk Dec 17 '12 at 18:54
When I was in charge of acquiring books for our math-library, books on "Group therapy" or similar stuff showed sometimes up in a list of math-books. – Roland Bacher Aug 06 '22 at 14:25

score 4 · Answer 112 · answered May 08 '11 at 13:35

4

I'm a big fan of "Excluding a Forest": technically precise, to the point, but just mysterious enough to grab the attention. I've said before that it ought to be the name of a band. ("Taming a vortex" is also good.)

answered May 08 '11 at 13:35

Harrison Brown

12,543

1

The link in the post no longer works. A quick google search suggests that it might be probably one of the papers Graph minors. I. Excluding a forest or Quickly excluding a forest. – Martin Sleziak Jul 23 '20 at 09:47
1

@MartinSleziak Based on the fact that the broken URL has the string coverDate=9/31/1983, I'm fairly sure that it is meant to point to the paper "Graph minors. I. Excluding a forest". This article is available at doi:10.1016/0095-8956(83)90079-5. – The Amplitwist May 07 '23 at 09:36

score 3 · Answer 113 · edited Jan 29 '22 at 14:38

3

The Chekanov torus in $S^2\times S^2$ is not real. Quite a philosophical title and I could never forget about it...

edited Jan 29 '22 at 14:38

David Roberts

33,851

answered Mar 05 '21 at 02:30

Shaoyun Bai

975

I had a working title on a paper of "On a virtual object which may not exist". Sadly I didn't have the gumption to follow through. – JP McCarthy Feb 17 '24 at 07:57

score 3 · Answer 114 · answered Sep 14 '21 at 11:29

3

Using the Logistic Map to Generate Scratching Sounds

The first sentence in the abstract:

This article presents a mathematical model for generating annoying scratching sounds.

answered Sep 14 '21 at 11:29

Per Alexandersson

15,598

score 3 · Answer 115 · answered Aug 06 '22 at 15:06

3

Honey, I Shrunk the Sample Covariance Matrix

answered Aug 06 '22 at 15:06

Mark L. Stone

1,462

score 3 · Answer 116 · answered Nov 05 '10 at 16:14

3

I really like humor in scientific texts, specially in titles. One of my favorite authors is Donald E. Knuth. A title like The sandwich theorem makes me curious about its content. The Art of Computer Programming is also a nice title.

answered Nov 05 '10 at 16:14

Lamine

288

score 3 · Answer 117 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:58

3

I like the second part of:

Breuil, Christophe; Conrad, Brian; Diamond, Fred; Taylor, Richard "On the modularity of elliptic curves over $\mathbf{Q}$: wild 3-adic exercises."

MR1839918 (2002d:11058)

They prove the remaining cases of the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture: "every elliptic curve is modular".

edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:58

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Apr 06 '11 at 16:08

Leo Alonso

8,944
2
41
57

score 3 · Answer 118 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 12:15

3

"A short tale of hybrid mice", by Grigor Sargsyan.

answered Aug 23 '11 at 12:15

Quinn Culver

907

The link gives a pdf with the title "Descriptive inner model theory". (At least now.) – Martin Sleziak Aug 12 '20 at 18:55

score 2 · Answer 119 · answered Oct 05 '21 at 10:10

2

Smullyan: what is the name of this book?

Mazzola: The Topos of Music

answered Oct 05 '21 at 10:10

Xi Li

29

score 2 · Answer 120 · answered Aug 06 '22 at 16:36

« Autopsie d'un meurtre » dans l'homologie d'une algèbre de chaînes ("Anatomy of a murder" in the homology of a chain algebra) by J.-M. Lemaire, http://www.numdam.org/item/ASENS_1978_4_11_1_93_0/

(For those who do not care about old movies as much as I do, the title of course alludes to the iconic film of Otto Preminger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_a_Murder)

score 2 · Answer 121 · answered Jan 03 '23 at 16:09

2

"49598666989151226098104244512918" by Michael Filaseta and Samuel Gross

answered Jan 03 '23 at 16:09

Sil

2,181

5

Is this really memorable? – Emil Jeřábek Jan 03 '23 at 16:20
I admit I went with "A title can be attractive even without having memorable material" with this one - certainly got me attracted to spend searching Cohn irreducibility criterion wiki page history to find out who entered such non-sense :o – Sil Jan 03 '23 at 16:29
@Sil I think Emil Jeřábek was intending a pun on the difficulty to memorize that hell of a number. – Alessandro Della Corte Jan 03 '23 at 22:46

score 2 · Answer 122 · edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:53

2

Quantum lower bounds by quantum arguments.

edited Aug 12 '20 at 18:53

Martin Sleziak

4,608

answered Oct 31 '10 at 19:32

Robin Kothari

1,312

score 2 · Answer 123 · answered Nov 03 '10 at 04:40

2

Some nice titles from B.A. Kupersmidt:

KP or mKP (a book)
Dark equations (an article)

answered Nov 03 '10 at 04:40

mathphysicist

5,233

score 1 · Answer 124 · answered Sep 14 '21 at 09:55

1

Mickley, Smith and Korchak's Fluid flow in packed beds.

(No-one in fluid mechanics seems to be willing to see the innuendo. They all want to explain the effect on the Reynolds number. And they hate it if you snigger when they mention turbulence.)

answered Sep 14 '21 at 09:55

tim penttila

104

score 1 · Answer 125 · edited Jan 03 '23 at 15:02

1

Old and new on SL(2) by Hilgert and Hofmann. I heard that the authors wrote a sequel with the title More is true on SL(2), but that the editors insisted on a different title.

edited Jan 03 '23 at 15:02

Steven Landsburg

22,477

answered Jan 03 '23 at 14:04

Linus

573

1

The sequel should have been "SL(2) II, Electric Boogalo." – JoshuaZ Feb 17 '24 at 02:53

score -2 · Answer 126 · edited Jan 01 '12 at 05:40

-2

Would a book titled Calculus Made Honest get me burned at the stake for heresy?

Or would it merely confuse mathematicians who don't understand what is in need of being made honest in that topic?

Later edit: This question illustrates nicely the emotional nature of the anonymous voting system. Robin Chapman commented: "So, it isn't an actual title, and so this reply is not an answer to the original question."

That proves that he never read the original question and didn't know what it said. Probably he drew an inference about its content from the many answers. Then people rushed in with "down" votes. I invite anyone who has doubts about this to read the original question by Suvrit, and I invite Robin Chapman to read it for the first time.

[Original answer by Michael Hardy.]

edited Jan 01 '12 at 05:40

Andrés E. Caicedo

32,193
5
130
233

answered Nov 01 '10 at 20:01

Michael Hardy

11,922
11
81
119

1

It might find a place on my shelves next to Mathematics Made Difficult, by Carl Linderholm, http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-made-difficult-Carl-Linderholm/dp/0529045524 – Gerry Myerson Nov 01 '10 at 20:20
That book was dedicated (in a manner that those familiar with modal logic might enjoy) "To Clement Durrell, without whom this book would not have been necessary."
But actually I had in mind a work of non-fiction.
– Michael Hardy Nov 01 '10 at 20:27
2

Is Calculus Made Honest an actual title? – Robin Chapman Nov 02 '10 at 11:00
@Robin: It is working title of a book that might exist if I compile and extend various things I've written. The conventional assembly-line-style calculus course that innumerable students are coerced to take was designed as follows: start with a course appropriate for students who are interested in math and want to learn a lot about it, and then water it down a lot. That is inappropriate as a course for certain students who differ from both those who major in math and those who are there because they are coerced. This would be suitable for a different kind of audience. – Michael Hardy Nov 02 '10 at 21:22
@Robin: The aforementioned coercion does result in dishonesty, and not only in the form of students cheating on exams. The course is forced to become something that students who resent being coerced will survive. A bunch of algorithms are presented; a little bit is said about what they mean but there is very little of that that students are expected to understand. And in effect they're told "That is what mathematics is." I've recently begun to appreciate that some mathematicians are protected from finding out about such things. – Michael Hardy Nov 02 '10 at 21:25
@Robin: I had thought my way of phrasing my posting made clear what I said in the first sentence of my reply to your question. – Michael Hardy Nov 02 '10 at 21:29
4

Could the anonymous persons who voted this down step forward and say something in this comment space? I am mystified by this reaction, so an explanation could be useful. I think the denizens of this forum should be competent to express themselves verbally; I think if I had something critical to say about a posting that I thought was worth voting down, I would say something. But no one has in this case. – Michael Hardy Nov 03 '10 at 12:56
12

So, it isn't an actual title, and so this reply is not an answer to the original question. – Robin Chapman Nov 04 '10 at 11:33
2

Nonetheless it bears upon the topic, in that I would propose that this would be more memorable than other titles. Other such proposed titles attempting to improve on whatever's out there would also bear on the topic. – Michael Hardy Nov 04 '10 at 16:04
7

Just to be completely clear: Robin Chapman is confused. He says I wasn't answering the original question, simply because my answer didn't give a title of a published paper. But the original question was not ONLY a request for such titles. Apparently Robin Chapman didn't finish reading the original question, and then he drew this conclusion that he would see to be incorrect if he had read it. – Michael Hardy Nov 08 '10 at 16:31
5

Robin Chapman is asserting elsewhere that I posted this answer only as a pretext for a polemic. At this point I can only surmise that he views my comments above as a polemic, and thinks that I posted for the purpose of posting those. But I posted them only in reply to Robin Chapman's question that I'd have thought he'd already know the answer to, because of the way I phrased my posting. – Michael Hardy Nov 08 '10 at 19:16

score -2 · Answer 127 · answered May 12 '11 at 13:18

-2

The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis. Alan Turing.

A math paper use chemical principles explaining biological phenomenon.

answered May 12 '11 at 13:18

Peter Wu

261

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