“A man may be a thoroughgoing soldier enough on land; but put him in the foot ropes of the flying jibboom in a storm, and he is apt to cut a most ludicrous figure. Shift a physicist's foothold of Cartesian differential coordinates, suspend him over an abyss of non-Euclidean space, and he will kick sturdily. Poor policy this, for a missionary!”

—  Carl Barus

"The Mathematical Theory of the Top" (April 8, 1898)

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Carl Barus 15
U.S. physicist 1856–1935

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