Hi
Bertrand Russel's Principia Mathematica is famous for taking a thousand pages to reach the result 1+1=2! The proof of famous Fermat's theorem is also 300 odd pages long.
I remember once while taking an exam when a guy asked for an extra answer sheet (I believe that guy had already taken two extra answer sheets), the invigilator jokingly told him that it took Einstein only three papers to do his most important work. At that time I believed him. But today I searched about it and it looks like that invigilator was totally wrong. Einstein published three important scientific papers in 1905 - the first one was about photoelectric effect, the second was on Brownian motion and the third one, the most important of the three, introduced theory of special relativity. I think that invigilator confused the term "papers". In the given context, a "paper" does not mean a single page; a scientific paper could be as long as 500 pages. Do I have it right?
Do you have any information about some of the important shortest and longest scientific papers/texts? Thank you.
Regards
PG