Just as artistic inspiration can appear from the most unlikely sources, scientific and mathematical inspiration are no different. Just think of Archimedes’ Eureka moment in the bathtub, or Isaac Newton’s apple incident. Although it’s possible those two famous examples are just the results of elegant storytelling over the years, the same can’t be said of Lewis Fry Richardson, who in 1950 Lewis Fry Richardson genuinely stumbled upon inspiration, and with it the beginnings of a new area of mathematics entirely.
Did anything come of this? Although I doubt that length would correlate, perhaps circuitousness might? At least when it's not due to following the contours of a river. It seems that friendly countries would be more comfortable with straighter lines dividing them.He started investigating a possible link between border length and the probability of war.