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The fictitious mathematician John Rainwater was created as a student prank but has become known as the author of important results in functional analysis. At the University of Washington in 1952, John Rainwater was invented and enrolled in a mathematics course by graduate students who were in possession of a duplicate student-registration form. Later, mathematicians published under the pseudonym of John Rainwater. Papers were published under the name Rainwater mainly in functional analysis, particularly in the geometric theory of Banach spaces and in convex functions. Rainwater's theorem is an important result in summability theory and functional analysis. The University of Washington's seminar in functional analysis is called the Rainwater seminar, and the associated Rainwater notes have influenced Banach-space theory and convex analysis.〔 The concept of a fictional pseudonym used by multiple people creating valuable mathematics is not unique. Most notably, Nicolas Bourbaki has been the collective pseudonym for a number of leading mathematicians writing in French for many decades. ==Creation== John Rainwater was invented by graduate students at the University of Washington in 1952, when students used an extra registration form to enroll Rainwater in a course on real functions. Students submitted homework for Rainwater throughout the semester. The professor caught on to the prank around the middle of the term. Other students in the class were made aware of the situation from the professor's enigmatic remarks after he became the victim of a novelty "exploding" fountain pen bearing Rainwater's name.〔 wrote that John Rainwater came into existence at the University of Washington in 1952 when Nick Massey, a mathematics graduate student in Prof. Maynard Arsove's beginning real variables class, erroneously received a blank registration card. (In those years, each student filled out a card for every class, which first circulated among various tabulating clerks in the registrar's office before being sent to the professor.) He and a fellow graduate student, Sam Saunders, decided to use the card to enroll a fictional student, and since it was raining at the time, decided to call him "John Rainwater". They handed in John Rainwater's homework regularly, so it wasn't until after the first midterm exam that Prof. Arsove became aware of the deception. He took it well, even when he later opened an "exploding" fountain pen with John Rainwater's name engraved on it which had been left on the classroom table. After remarks by Arsove, such as "I guess I'll never see Rainwater except in a barrel," virtually all the students learned of the Rainwater prank.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Rainwater」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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