Some of his friends had almost
succeeded in securing his nomination to the Provostship of King's
College, Cambridge; the appointment, however, fell through, inasmuch
as the statute could not be evaded, which required that the Provost
of King's College should be in holy orders.
In those days it was often the custom for illustrious mathematicians,
when they had discovered a solution for some new and striking
problem, to publish that problem as a challenge to the world, while
withholding their own solution. A famous instance of this is found
in what is known as the Brachistochrone problem, which was solved by
John Bernouilli. The nature of this problem may be mentioned. It
was to find the shape of the curve along which a body would slide
down from one point (A) to another point (B) in the shortest time. It
might at first be thought that the straight line from A to B, as it
is undoubtedly the shortest distance between the points, would also
be the path of quickest descent; but this is not so. There is a
curved line, down which a bead, let us say, would run on a smooth
wire from A to B in a shorter time than the same bead would require
to run down the straight wire. Bernouilli's problem was to find out
what that curve must be.
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