In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, each working on mathematics at Princeton University, submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly what they believed was “a brand new world document within the number of phrases in a [math] paper.”
Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I submitted our paper that included simply two phrases, ‘n2 + 2 can’ and our two drawings. [See one of them above.]” The story then continues: “The American Mathematical Monthly was surprised, and didn’t know what to do about our new world document of a 2‑phrase article. Two days later, on April 30, 2004, the Editorial Assistant Mrs. Margaret Combs acknowledged the receipt of the paper”:
The Monthly publishes exposition of mathematics at many levels, and it contains articles each lengthy and quick. Your article, however, is a bit too quick to be Monthly article… A line or two of explanation would actually assist.
Soifer writers: “The identical day on the cofcharge hour I requested John [Conway], ‘What do you suppose?’ His reply was concise, ‘Don’t surrender too easily.’ Accordingly, I replied [to] The Monthly the identical day”:
I respectfully disagree {that a} quick paper usually—and this paper particularly—merely because of its measurement have to be “a bit too quick to be a good Monthly article.” Is there a connection between quantity and quality?… Now we have posed a tremendous (in our opinion) open problem and reported two distinct “behold-style” proofs of our advance on this problem. What else is there to elucidate?
Soifer provides: “The Monthly, apparently felt outgunned, for on Might 4, 2004, the reply got here from The Monthly’s prime gun, Editor-in-Chief Bruce Palka”:
The Monthly publishes two kinds of papers: “articles,” that are substantive expository papers ranging in size from about six to twenty-five pages, and “notes,” that are quicker, frequently somewhat extra technical items (typically within the one-to-five web page vary). I can ship your paper to the notes editor if you want, however I count on that he’ll not be interested in it both due to its size and lack of any substantial accompanying textual content. The standard manner during which we use such quick papers nowadays is as “boxed filler” on pages that would othersmart contain a number of the clean area that publishers abhor. In the event you’d enable us to make use of your paper in that manner, I’d be happy to publish it.
Soifer concludes: “John Conmanner and I settle fored the ‘filler’, and within the January 2005 subject our paper was published.” Victory!
Get more of the backstory here.
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