Indeed, Penrose apparently talked about it in the 1970's; but I'd be very surprised if the idea wasn't a good deal older than that --- maybe 1870's? WFL On 7/17/11, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
This style of result was well-known to algebraic geometers at least 30 years ago. My college algebraic geometry textbook, Fulton's *Algebraic Curves*, gives several examples.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Fred lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> wrote:
Several people --- Roger Penrose and Terry Tao for two --- have (independently?) had the idea of proving Euclid-style theorems via special cases of a single result about cubic or quartic curves: see
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/pappuss-theorem-and-elliptic-curves...
Does anybody know of an available reference?
Fred Lunnon
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