Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   9

---

238
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
11
 Ends Well: 
Happy Endings
Maybe it’s not a happy ending, but it’s a funny one: Our favor-
ite death in cinema comes courtesy of 
Spinal Tap,
 in which 
drummer Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs chokes to death on some-
one else’s vomit.
✖  ✖  ✖
It’s estimated to have killed more than a hundred million peo-
ple over the centuries, but smallpox is history—at least for 
now. Th
  at’s because eff ective and harmless inoculations have 
existed for smallpox ever since Dr. Edward Jenner discovered, 
in 1796, that a milder disease, cowpox, worked as a smallpox 
vaccine. But as late as 1958, two million people were dying of 
smallpox every year. Beginning in 1967, teams of doctors 
worked to eliminate the disease by inoculating everyone near 
The Happy Ending Problem
Our very favorite Happy Ending comes from the world of math. In 
1933, a young Hungarian mathematician named George Sze-
keres was hanging out with his friends, chatting math, when a 
young woman named Esther Klein posed a problem: “Given fi ve 
points in the plane in general position, prove that four of them 
form a convex quadrilateral.” (Note: You don’t have to understand 
that sentence to enjoy the story. We certainly don’t.) George 
couldn’t fi gure it out. But when Esther showed him her proof, they 
began discussing it, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Ever 
since, the problem has been known in mathematics as “the Happy 
Ending problem.” George and Esther were married for 68 years. 
They died a few hours apart on August 28, 2005.

---

239
an outbreak. Th
  e results worked. In 1977, smallpox became 
the fi rst disease ever to be eradicated by human ingenuity.