It's incredibly embarassing that, for essentially my entire adult life, I thought that Stanislaw Ulam and Stanislaw Lem were one and the same person.
And every so often I would read an article about one of them, and think to myself: "how amazing that guy was! look how many different things he did! look how much output he had! how did he find the time!"
Most recently, there was an article about Lem in the New Yorker last spring, and an article about Ulam in the New Yorker this fall. That was, finally, close enough together that something clicked in my brain, and I looked them up properly.
I mean, each of them, separately, truly was amazing
But now at least I'm no longer harboring the impression that Stanislaw was simultaneously working on the Manhattan Project while living in the Lviv Ghetto.
Well, I guess he was, in a way, but it was two different Stanislaws.
Embarassing, indeed. But I'm set straight now.
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