Nobert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in
fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they
moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely
useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since
she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had
moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to
him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled
some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and
threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the
old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they
had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of
paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There
was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where
he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner
and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the
young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget."
The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the
story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't
quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it,
however, was pretty close to what actually happened...
-- Richard Harter
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