From: rjsalvad@iastate.edu (Ricardo J Salvador)
Subject: Re: Sobre la cita de Feynman
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 20:58:05 GMT

In article <BvvJyt.FIo@rice.edu> rene@rice.edu (Rene G. Rodriguez) writes:

>En apoyo a lo que dice Alex, Feynman vivio algunos a~os en Brasil y
>definitivamente _no_ fue el tipico turista. Algunas de sus aventuras
>en aquellas latitudes vienen narradas en el libro "Surely you are
>joking, Mr. Feynman" (cuya traduccion al espa~ol creo haber visto 
>recientement).
>
>Feynman, aunque era fisico y trabajo en el proyecto Manhattan, fue
>uno de los primeros en decifrar jeroglificos mayas.
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lejos de la verdad, pero si' es cierto que independientemente estudio'
las tablas perio'dicas de Venus y la luna (del Co'dice de Dresde). Del
libro que citas, pongo el pasaje siguiente, que es parte de un divertido
capi'tulo en el cual relato' Feynman (sin duda una de las mayores
luces de nuestros tiempos, desafortunadamente fallecido hace pocos a~os
de un ca'ncer del hi'gado) co'mo le salio' el tiro por la culata a una
profesora de UCLA quien organizo' un coloquio con el fin de inculcar
mayor cultura a los cienti'ficos de su universidad. Resulto' que los
contribuyentes principales a su coloquio fueron los mismos cienti'ficos
a quienes la profesora (Dra. Nina Byers) queri'a educar, entre ellos
Feynman.

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   The only reason I knew anything about Mayan mathematics
was that I was getting exhausted on my honeymoon in Mexico
with my second wife, Mary Lou. She was greatly interested in art
history, particularly that of Mexico. So we went to Mexico for our
honeymoon and we climbed up pyramids and down pyramids;
she had me following her all over the place. She showed me many 
interesting things, such as certain relationships in the designs of
various figures, but after a few days (and nights) of going up and
down in hot and steamy jungles, I was exhausted.
   In some little Guatemalan town in the middle of nowhere we
went into a museum that had a case displaying a manuscript full
of strange symbols, pictures, and bars and dots.  It was a copy
(made by a man named Villacorta) of the Dresden Codex, an
original book made by the Mayans found in a museum in Dres-
den. I knew the bars and dots were numbers. My father had taken
me to the New York World's Fair when I was a little kid, and there
they had reconstructed a Mayan temple. I remembered him tell-
ing me how the Mayans had invented the zero and had done
many interesting things.
   The museum had copies of the codex for sale, so I bought
one.  On each page at the left was the codex copy, and on the right
a description and partial translation in Spanish.
   I love puzzles and codes, so when I saw the bars and dots, I
thought, "I'm gonna have some fun!" I covered up the Spanish
with a piece of yellow paper and began playing this game of
deciphering the Mayan bars and dots, sitting in the hotel room,
while my wife climbed up and down the pyramids all day.
   I quickly figured out that a bar was equal to five dots, what the
symbol for zero was, and so on. It took me a little longer to figure
out that the bars and dots always carried at twenty the first time,
but they carried at eighteen the second time (making cylcles of
360). I also worked out all kinds of things about varios faces:
they had surely meant certain days and weeks.
[...]
   There was one place in the codex where the number 584 was
very prominent. This 584 was divided into periods of 236, 90,
250, and 8. Another prominent number was 2920, or 584 X 5
(also 365 X 8). There was a table of multiples of 2920 up to 13
X 2920, then there were multiples of 13 X 2920 for a while, and
then--funny numbers! They were errors, as far as I could tell. Only
many years later did I figure out what they were.
  Because figures denoting days were associated with this 584
which was divided up so peculiarly, I figured if it wasn't some
mythical period of some sort, it might be something astronomi-
cal. Finally I went down to the astronomy library and looked it
up, and found that 583.92 days is the period of Venus as it
appears from the earth. Then the 236, 90, 250, 8 became appar-
ent: it must be the phases that Venus goes through. It's a morn-
ing star, then it can't be seen (it's on the far side of the sun); then
it's an evening star, and finally it disappears again (it's between
the earth and the sun). The 90 and the 8 are different because 
Venus moves more slowly through the sky when it is on the far
side of the sun compared to when it passes between the earth and
the sun. The difference between the 236 and the 250 might
indicate a difference between the eastern and western horizons
in Maya land.
   I discovered another table nearby that had periods of 11,959
days. This turned out to be a table for predicting lunar eclipses.
Still another table had multiples of 91 in descending order. I
never did figure that one out (nor has anyone else).
   When I had worked out as much as I could, I finally decided
to look at the Spanish commentary to see how much I was able
to figure out. It was complete nonesense. This symbol was Saturn,
this symbol was a god--it didn't make the slightest bit of sense.
So I didn't have to have covered the commentary; I wouldn't have
learned anything from it anyway.
   After that I began to read a lot about the Mayans, and found
that the great man in this business was Eric Thompson, some of
whose books I now have.
[...]
I did all the calculations all over again, and in fact I got a little
bit further than I did before: I figured out that those "funny
numbers" which I thought before were errors were really integer
multiples of something closer to the correct period (583.923)--
the Mayans had realized that 584 wasn't exactly right!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Como fi'sico, matema'tico, filo'sofo, maestro y mera gente Feynman
fue' una persona muy digna de respeto y admiracio'n, y por lo visto
entendio' muchos aspectos de Me'xico y cultura mexicana mucho mejor
de lo que lo conocen muchos mexicanos mismos.

Hasta moztla,
Ricardo