The Story of William Feller, the Mathematician

  By Dr Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio

William Feller (July 7, 1906 – January 14, 1970), was a professor of Mathematics at Princeton University from 1950 until his death in 1970. He wrote two books and 104 papers on many mathematical disciplines including statistics and probability. He was one of the greatest probabilists of the 20th century. His efforts resulted in probability theory being accepted as a branch of Mathematics.

Once he and his wife, Clara, were trying to move a large round table from the living room to the dining room. They pushed, pulled and twisted in every possible way, but they could not get the table to pass through the door. He told his wife that there is no mathematical possibility of that table passing through that door. His wife was adamant that it could be done. To prove his point, he sat on his desk, took a pencil and paper, and developed a mathematical model of the situation. After several calculations he came to the conclusion that there was zero probability of that table passing through that door. When he turned towards his wife to give the result, he found that she had already moved the table into the dining room!!!

The moral of the story:

1. Sometimes common sense is more useful than a PhD.

2. Wives are never wrong.