What's the joke behind "Did Bernoulli sleep before he found the curves of quickest descent?"

Question

In Spider Man 2 Peter is talking to Otto before an experiment. Peter, Otto, and his wife Rosie have this exchange:

ROSIE: You need to sleep soundly tonight, Otto.

OTTO: Did Edison sleep before he turned on the light? Did Marconi sleep before he turned on the radio? Did Beethoven sleep before he wrote the 5th?

PETER : Did Bernoulli sleep before he found the curves of quickest descent?

OTTO: Rosie, I love this boy.

I can't figure out what Peter is saying. He's delivering the line like he's proving Otto wrong and Bernoulli somehow slept before or in order to discover the curves of quickest descent. From what I can gleam from Wikipedia, Bernoulli sent a challenge out to the mathematics community, got promising answers from several mathematicians, and then published his combined findings. Nothing in particular stands out as requiring or being related to sleep.

Answer 1

The most likely interpretation is the one already pointed out by onewho and Valorum: that Peter is simply showing off his knowledge and impressing Otto by doing so. After all, how many non-scientists would even have heard of Bernoulli and the curves of quickest descent, let alone be able to drop a reference into a casual conversation in such an off-the-cuff manner?

Digging a little deeper into the context though, there are a few interesting twists on this one:

• After Bernoulli announced the problem of finding a curve of quickest descent, it went a long time before being solved - a time during which he obviously must have slept. Even his own period of solidly working on it was two weeks long.

  Bernoulli allowed six months for the solutions but none were received during this period. At the request of Leibniz, the time was publicly extended for a year and a half. [...] Johann Bernoulli took two weeks to solve it.

• One of the solutions to this problem (albeit Newton's and not Bernoulli's) was achieved without sleep, at least supposedly.

  On 29 January 1697 the challenge was received by Isaac Newton, who found it in his mail, in a letter from Johann Bernoulli, when he arrived home from the Royal Mint at 4 p.m., and stayed up all night to solve it and mailed the solution anonymously by the next post. Upon reading the solution, Bernoulli immediately recognized its author, exclaiming that he recognizes a lion from his claw mark.

Answer 2

There is no joke here. Peter wasn't trying to prove Otto wrong or insinuate that Bernoulli somehow slept before discovering the curves of the quickest descent.

The comment Peter makes is meant to indicate to Otto that Peter is on the same intellectual level as Otto. It's because Peter is able to keep up with Otto's intelligence, despite Peter's age, and lack of experience, that Otto 'loves this boy'.

Answer 3

In fact, the dialogue here plays on two levels.

First, why a reference to the need for sleep, before making some big discovery (or move) ?

This reminds of the anecdote over the discovery of the cyclic structure of benzene by Kekulé Von Stradonitz. This prominent German scientist once explained how he found the long-time-sought-for solution: he dreamt of a snake eating its own tail, or 'ouroboros'. When he woke, he knew that benzene molecules would have a cyclic form!

Otto is thus arguing that he does not need sleep to be a genius, or make a great move. Doing so, he uses publicly well-known facts about inventions and their inventors.

Actually, his point is stronger than that: he wants to do exactly what he is intending to, without delay nor disturbance.

Peter, on the other hand, answers with a non-trivial scientific reference. This makes Otto admirative of Peter, but this is not what Peter wants.

Peter is trying to warn his old friend Otto that he's going to make a big mistake, whereas Otto only sees Peter as challenging his own knowledge.

Answer 4

“Curves of quickest descent” in simple terms basically Bernoulli discovered that obviously while descending (going down) a straight path might be a shorter distance to travel BUT going down a curved path is the fastest. Peter Parker uses this principle of physics while he’s out being Spider-Man you see him swinging & falling in a curved path because as your hitting that curve you’re generating more speed, making you travel quicker & you see him following bernoulli’s principle which is the little joke behind it. Small but a big piece of detail. Him being the geek he is you can see how he knows this.