AtDTdA (9): 239

[Jasper]

239 Lew meets Renfrew at Cambridge

Brief summary:
Lew and Crouchmas arrive in Cambridge to meet with Renfrew.  Crouchmas 
leaves Lew and Renfrew alone to discuss a business proposition.  Renfrew 
takes Lew back to his place. Renfrew wants Lew to find the Gentleman 
Bomber of Headingly.  Renfrew rants for a while about railway lines.  
Lew returns to the Cohen and reports.

Page 239:
Cambridge
Cambridge is the county town of Cambridgeshire on the River Cam.  Its 
university, the second-oldest in the English-speaking world, has been 
the town's main feature since the 13th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_university

Photos from 1900:
http://www.datadirect.org.uk/cgi-bin/cambscoll/history.pl?id=50;action=display

Current photos:
http://www.cambridge2000.com/cambridge2000/html/date_built/1900.html

Maps:
hi-res: *http://tinyurl.com/2tslxc [cambridgeshire.gov.uk]
lo-res: **http://tinyurl.com/76xgv **[cambridgeshire.gov.uk]*

---

Girton gatehouse
Part of Cambridge University, Girton College was the first residential 
college for women in England, and remained an all female college until 
1977.  It was situated on the extremity of Cambridge, far from the town 
center, in order to make it difficult for men from the other colleges to 
drop by.

I suppose it is therefore an appropriate place to leave Yashmeen.

The gatehouse:
http://www.cambridge2000.com/cambridge2000/html/0006/P6081165.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girton_College%2C_Cambridge

---

ENCYCLICAL
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high 
authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive Wikipedia article 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical) explains and adds a list of 
papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as 
its title (/Multi et Unus/ in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an 
atheist, should send out an encyclical!
*wiki*

---

MCTAGGART . . . HARDY
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke.
http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html

Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher who argued 
that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it. W.H. Hardy was a 
very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the famous philosophers 
in England.

John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart (1866-1925), British 
philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, 
Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at 
Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and 
studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) 
were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in /Nature of 
Existence/ (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of 
Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf page 412: 
dismissing . . . the /existence/ of Time).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart

Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a 
lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and 
Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed 
Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and 
dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions 
to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution 
of prime numbers, etc.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html
*wiki*

---

/Multi et Unus/
Many and One.
*wiki*

---

CREATE MORE DUKES and EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS
Is the graffiti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the 
balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when 
bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. 
It first arose around 1900 [6]. In 2005 it caused administrators to 
change the rules of the game [7].
[6] http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html
[7] http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html
*wiki*

---

the Laplacian, a relatively remote mathematicians' pub
A little Pynchonian joke? The Laplacian operator is a component of the 
Schrödinger equation, the basis of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics 
was famously rejected by Albert Einstein (many references on the net but 
see Stephen Hawking -- http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html), 
known for his theories of relativity. Moreover, quantum mechanics deals 
with the very small and relativity with the very large (this is a 
simplification of course), so the Laplacian is indeed remote from 
relativity!

No such pub during my stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, 
according to this list:
http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/
*wiki*

Pierre-Simon, *Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827)
French mathematician and astronomer who discovered Laplace's equation, 
and proved the stability of the solar system.  Given he was elected a 
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1789, it is perhaps not unreasonable that 
a pub in Cambridge were named for him (Isaac Newton has one after all).
*
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Laplace.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace