Scottish Café

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The Scottish Café (Polish: Kawiarnia Szkocka) was the café in Lwów (now Lviv) where, in the 1930s and 1940s, Polish mathematicians from the Lwów School of Mathematics met and spent their afternoons discussing mathematical problems.

Stanisław Ulam recounts that the tables of the café had marble tops, so they could write in pencil, directly on the table, during their discussions. To avoid the results being lost, and after becoming annoyed with their writing directly on the table tops, Stefan Banach's wife provided the mathematicians with a large notebook, which was used for writing the problems and answers that eventually became known as the Scottish Book. The book, a collection of both solved, unsolved and even unsolvable dilemmas, could be borrowed by any of the guests of the café. Solving any of the mathematical paradoxes was rewarded with often absurd prizes, such as a live goose.

It is now located at 27, Taras Shevchenko Prospekt.

[edit] See also

• Stefan Banach
• Stanisław Saks
• Stanisław Ulam
• Hugo Steinhaus
• Stanisław Mazur
• Marek Kac
• Kazimierz Kuratowski
• Juliusz Schauder
• Stefan Kaczmarz

[edit] References

• "Though a Reporter's Eyes: The Life of Stefan Banach," Roman Kaluza

[edit] External links

• Scottish book
• Kawiarnia Szkocka at the MacTutor archive
• Sheldon Axler's review of "The Life of Stefan Banach"