You are here  Alien Encounters - Act 1: Confusion and Paradox
Gavin Hitchcock  Scene:     Various mathematicians of the
seventeenth century in conversation, seated or standing, as the
last decade of the century begins:  JOHN WALLIS (aged English
mathematician, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford);
ANTOINE ARNAULD (aged French theologian and mathematician);
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (German diplomat, mathematician and universal
sage, at the peak of his philosophical powers).  Seated
frontstage: LEONHARD EULER (Swiss mathematician in his late
twenties, representing the early 18th century looking back). He
gives introduction and commentary for the benefit of the
audience, but eventually finds himself drawn into the
conversation .  EULER [to audience ]  Look! These are some of
the truly great mathematicians of the seventeenth century -
there is John Wallis from England: he was a Professor at Oxford.
And that Frenchman is Antoine Arnauld, the great antagonist of
the Jesuits - he was more a theologian than a mathemat