The Author's Strange Encounter With Johann Heinrich Lambert

The name "Lambert" seems to be the source of some strange coincidences in the author's life.

  1. It is the name of the German mathematician, physicist and astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert. The author is a mathematician by day and an amateur astronomer by night. The name of the author's favorite composer (Bach) is Johann. The author's name (Ioannis) is Johann in German.
  2. In 1979 the author's favorite movie Alien came out. One of the passengers was named Lambert, played by Veronica Cartright.
  3. The original design of the alien creature was by H.R. Giger, who the author is a big fan of.
  4. The author is a big fan of the Highlander movies and series, where the actor Christopher Lambert plays the immortal Highlander.
  5. The author is also a big fan of the Matrix films, where Lambert Wilson plays the Merovingian.
  6. The author's father owned a VW beetle, whose left door was destroyed in a car accident in 1971. The door was subsequently changed in 1972 and along with that, the car keys. The new car key (which the author still has in his possession), has on it imprinted an area which resembles the image of the Complex unit circle, under the map φ(z)=ez/ez (Shell-Thron region) the inverse of which involves Lambert's W Function. This is the area of the Complex plane inside which the infinite exponential tower +∞z converges. vw key with Shell-Thron area
  7. Having high cholesterol, the author has been taking Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) tablets, which are produced by Pfizer Pharmaceutical. Pfizer was previously known as Warner-Lambert.
  8. In emission spectroscopy which is one of the author's hobbies, he often stumbled along the Beer-Lambert Law which involves the log function (although admittedly in base 10). The natural log function is intimately tied with Lambert's W function.
  9. In lighting engineering and optics, which are some of the author's other hobbies, he often stumbled along the Lambert's Cosine Law.
  10. In 1999 the author was hired by the University of Crete to investigate applications of Maple in Analysis. There he encountered Lambert's W Function
  11. In 2000 the author set forth to investigate various ideas on Infinite Exponentials, and the results of this investigation which are presented in the Mathematics section, involve again Lambert's W Function.

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