Subject: Re: 2 postings
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 23:05:16 -0500
From: Tom Goodwillie <tomg@math.brown.edu>
To: Don Davis <dmd1@lehigh.edu>

>except possibly to my reputation! Frank Adams used to tell me that
>I cannot even say homotopy correctly, putting the stress on the
>wrong syllable.
>

Funny you should mention that, Andrew. IAt Cambridge, about 25 years ago,
at afternoon tea in the mathematics department, I heard a conversational
exchange that went something like this:

Student: Professor Adams, is it pronounced "HOmotopy" or "hoMOtopy"?

Adams: Well, in fact if you take the Greek roots of the word as your guide
the correct pronunciation lies about halfway between those two.

(He then demonstrated how to do it. I believe that the first three
syllables all got about equal stress; and of course the vowel in all of
them was that English version of the "short o" that we Americans don't
really have in our repertoire.)

Tom Goodwillie

Prof. Thomas Goodwillie
Department of Mathematics
Brown University