An interesting story about the Scottish Café in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), where mathematicians would gather to pose, discuss and solve problems:
The Kawiarnia Szkocka (Scottish Café) was the café in Lwów where, in the 1930s and 1940s, Polish mathematicians from the Lwów School of Mathematics met and spent their afternoons discussing mathematical problems.
Stanisław 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 that eventually became known as the Scottish Book. The book, a collection of both solved, unsolved and even unsolvable dilemmas, could be borrowed by any of the guests of the café.
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Tags: Lviv, Lwów, Mathematicians, Poland, Scottish Book, Scottish Café, Stanislaw Ulam, Stefan Banach, Ukraine
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