‘Be the change you want to see in the world’
Mahatma Ghandi

http://www.gagpipe.com/

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

Welcome Back to MathWorld!

Gentle Readers,

In late October 2000, MathWorld disappeared from the web. It remained shut down by a lawsuit for more than a year. That year was a nightmare for me–the worst period of my life. I can’t tell you how much I have wanted to be able to announce that MathWorld is back. And now I can. The ordeal is finally over. The web site is back up and running.

My first impulse is just to invite old friends and new visitors to plunge back in. We’ve lost a year’s worth of work on the web site–no small thing at the rate Todd Rowland and I were adding entries and you were contributing suggestions and material. All the more reason to get back to the business of adding to and enhancing the contents of MathWorld!

Please use and enjoy this unique resource. Help me make it better. That’s why I created MathWorld in the first place. That’s why Wolfram Research decided to sponsor it and me. And that’s why Wolfram Research devoted tremendous amounts of time and money this last year to get it back online.

My second impulse is to thank all of you who sent me what eventually became thousands of encouraging emails during this horrible year. MathWorld has been a major focus of my life for more than a decade. It was devastating to find myself in a lawsuit that could have destroyed a major part of my life’s work.

The support you transmitted through your emails was matched only by that I received at Wolfram Research. My colleagues rallied to the defense of MathWorld immediately and decisively, and Wolfram Research, a privately held company run by the innovators who built it, stood up for me and for the principles behind MathWorld.

Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram took time away from his around-the-clock effort to complete his decade-long project and long-awaited book A New Kind of Science. Similarly, Theodore Gray, a key Mathematica developer, put aside his own projects for days on end to lend his expertise to fight for and defend MathWorld.

Before we all get back to work, I invite you to spend a few minutes with the detailed narrative I have written describing my ordeal over the last year. Why take the time to read this story? Read it because I’m fairly certain you don’t want to again lose this or any other online resources that you have come to rely upon. And believe me, if you ever assemble a body of knowledge that you want to share with others, you don’t want to go through what I have just gone through.

So welcome back! Plunge in, enjoy, learn, and help share and spread the wonder of mathematics. And if you can, please also join the effort to keep online resources like this up and available.

Best wishes,

Eric W. Weisstein
mathworld@wolfram.com
Encyclopedist
Wolfram Research, Inc.

Carpet ordered
Bed ordered
Matress ordered

(I meant my blog will start getting posted to again!)

MX