[FOM] Weil's Rosetta Stone--translated into English

[Martin Krieger]

In the interchange on Corfield's book, and John Baez's discussion of it,
there is a reference to Weil's Rosetta Stone analogy. The quotations come
from a charming and deep letter Weil wrote in 1940 to his sister, Simone,
from Bonne Nouvelle prison. In my book Doing Mathematics: Convention,
Subject, Calculation, Analogy (World Scientific, 2003) that long letter is
translated into English (see Appendix D, pp. 293-305). I also happen to have
a discussion of the analogy, in chapter 5 (pp. 189-230), in connection with
the Langlands program and with results in statistical mechanics of the Ising
model.

Martin Krieger
University of Southern California
Los Angeles CA 90089-0626
krieger at usc.edu