The Scottish Café (Polish: Kawiarnia Szkocka; Ukrainian: Шотла́ндська кав'я́рня, Russian: Шотла́ндское кафе) was the café in Lwów (now Lviv) where, in the 1930s and 1940s, Polish mathematicians from the Lwów School of Mathematics met and spent their afternoons discussing mathematical problems.
Stanislaw Ulam recounts that the tables of the café had marble tops, so they could write in pencil, directly on the table, during their discussions. To avoid the results being lost, and after becoming annoyed with their writing directly on the table tops, Stefan Banach's wife provided the mathematicians with a large notebook, which was used for writing the problems and answers and eventually became known as the Scottish Book. The book—a collection of both solved, unsolved, and even provably unsolvable problems—could be borrowed by any of the guests of the café. Solving any of the mathematical problems was rewarded with often absurd prizes, such as a live goose.
The café is now located at 27, Taras Shevchenko Prospekt.
Poultry as a prize in a Polish math community doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. You can find the entire article here along with links and such.
More Polish mathematicians to come!
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