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Omar Antolín

@nonfedimemes Instead of fretting about APA you should just name the person you dreamed about as a coauthor of the paper. That's what mathematician Bob Thomason did:

"The first author must state that his coauthor and close friend, Tom Trobaugh, quite intelligent, singularly original, and inordinately generous, killed himself consequent to endogenous depression. Ninety-four days later, in my dream, Tom's simulacrum remarked, "The direct limit characterization of perfect complexes shows that they extend, just as one extends a coherent sheaf." Awaking with a start, I knew this idea had to be wrong, since some perfect complexes have a non-vanishing K₀ obstruction to extension. I had worked on this problem for 3 years, and saw this approach to be hopeless. But Tom's simulacrum had been so insistent, I knew he wouldn't let me sleep undisturbed until I had worked out the argument and could point to the gap. This work quickly led to the key results of this paper. To Tom, I could have explained why he must be listed as a coauthor. During his lifetime, Tom also pointed out the interesting comparison of the careers of Grothendieck and Newton."

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marilyn

@oantolin @nonfedimemes Haha! How did I get so far in life without knowing that story? But there's a PDF of the paper here: maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/paper

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