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Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

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Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#31

Post by Koshkin »

celticninja wrote: post #28
thanatropism wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frenchmen are legendarily intolerant of badly-spoken French. This was a recurring theme in my couple of years as a student at Alliance Française - when in France (most people hoped to go to college or grad school there) if you're not solid don't even try. In Brazil people will be glad you're trying and try to speak slowly in return.

Yeah, this is my experience too. You should always attempt to use the language of where you are except in France. They would rather you spoke English than butchered their language. I usually keep it to please and thank you in french as a result. Although I did once use my high school french to ask where the swimming pool was once and had a bit of trouble deciphering the response I got (in french). So swimming pools a…

I think problem is, English accent is probably the worst. This is because pronunciation-wise there hardly are other two languages as different as English and French. (The French return the favor, obviously - their accent sounds just as terrible.)

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#32

Post by Koshkin »

thanatropism wrote: post #29
Double_a_92 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you need to look up some soviet era literature?

The weird thing is that while modern-style mathematics with lots of display maths is supposedly to be less dependent on subtleties of text (as opposed to the arguments of old-style topology books like Munkres, which use display equations a lot less and pack a lot of oomph into dense paragraphs with inlined symbols). But mathematical terminology actually changes a lot -- it's enough to open a page in Wikipedia and swi…

To be fair, a ‘campo’ is also a ‘corpo’ that is commutative.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#33

Post by hprotagonist »

huhtenberg wrote: post #27
thanatropism wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frenchmen are legendarily intolerant of badly-spoken French. This was a recurring theme in my couple of years as a student at Alliance Française - when in France (most people hoped to go to college or grad school there) if you're not solid don't even try. In Brazil people will be glad you're trying and try to speak slowly in return.

Speaking bad French to French people helps them to suddenly remember that they also speak English.

German has a similar effect, too.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#34

Post by Koshkin »

thanatropism wrote: post #26
ColinWright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that doing well in competitions is a separate question from going on to do amazing research. There are plenty of people who did phenomenally well in competitions and then went on to be successful being mathematicians in other fields, working at Big Co, or starting up their own company, but most of the really, really top mathematicians that I know didn't go in for competitions. There are exceptions, but…

I've had a couple of experiences with math olympians. They were both very bright (I don't know how they're not followed by throngs of beautiful ${people who are attracted to men} -- solving compass-and-straightedge problems can be as performative and awe-inspiring as an impressive guitar solo), but they lacked in other hard-to-define areas. They had thin skins for criticism (people like me who have failed in competit…

> women

Or men, for that matter.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#35

Post by thanatropism »

Koshkin wrote: post #34
thanatropism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a couple of experiences with math olympians. They were both very bright (I don't know how they're not followed by throngs of beautiful ${people who are attracted to men} -- solving compass-and-straightedge problems can be as performative and awe-inspiring as an impressive guitar solo), but they lacked in other hard-to-define areas. They had thin skins for criticism (people like me who have failed in competit…

> women Or men, for that matter.

Fair enough. Fixed!

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#38

Post by thanatropism »

Koshkin wrote: post #32
thanatropism wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is that while modern-style mathematics with lots of display maths is supposedly to be less dependent on subtleties of text (as opposed to the arguments of old-style topology books like Munkres, which use display equations a lot less and pack a lot of oomph into dense paragraphs with inlined symbols). But mathematical terminology actually changes a lot -- it's enough to open a page in Wikipedia and swi…

To be fair, a ‘campo’ is also a ‘corpo’ that is commutative.

An observation that illustrates my point.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#40

Post by Sean1708 »

OJFord wrote: post #7
avip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it worth flagging, maybe some HN readers are interested in Langland's work? Just retitle it, prefix [note for clickbait-aversed: it's Langland]

I wouldn't do that, I'd just prefix `Langland: `, so the title remains as in the article, but a bit like a subtitle. (I Would Also Remove Clickbait Case But Maybe That's Just Me!)

What's Clickbait Case?
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