How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
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Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#2Those books look like they'd all fit on $300 worth of shelving from IKEA.
The library probably cost $800k to remodel.
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#3While folks might not be getting many papers done, the research has hardly stopped. There are many many maths seminars [0] moved online.
[0] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/04/online_seminar_...
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#4Those books look like they'd all fit on $300 worth of shelving from IKEA. The library probably cost $800k to remodel.
You could also fit a large assortment of gourmet meats into a stack of shoeboxes, but it's preferable to display them in a way that whets the observer's appetite.
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#5Those books look like they'd all fit on $300 worth of shelving from IKEA. The library probably cost $800k to remodel.
You could also fit a large assortment of gourmet meats into a stack of shoeboxes, but it's preferable to display them in a way that whets the observer's appetite.
I don't know, I find a bunch of yellow-spined Springer texts to be appetizing just shelved together. I didn't realize the shelves weren't empty until I saw the top comment and went back to look.
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#6While folks might not be getting many papers done, the research has hardly stopped. There are many many maths seminars [0] moved online. [0] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/04/online_seminar_...
Indeed - Check out the amazing https://mathseminars.org/
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#7> “Mathematics used to be a much more individual activity,” Minsky said. “Maybe in the next year or so, we’ll be back to some solo projects.”
Seems that most research used to be more individual. I'm not sure why research has shifted towards being collaboration-heavy and I don't think that this has necessarily improved the quality of science. In my experience, papers with many authors tend to be worse. (Could be field specific.)
A few months ago I got reviews back for a paper I wrote which had only me as the author and one of the reviewers was suspicious of this and brought it up in the review. They didn't say what they were suspicious of but I'd guess that they assumed that the work couldn't have been done by an individual. I replied that the work was done one my own and anyone with a small contribution not worthy of authorship was mentioned in the acknowledgements. I'm still waiting to hear if that would satisfy the reviewer.
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#8If you're interested, there's a paper on a more "extreme" situation that mainly related to Soviet mathematics developing solely within USSR apart from the rest of the world (see the "Luzin affair").
The paper examines the aftermath.
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/127/3/1143/192...
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#9Those books look like they'd all fit on $300 worth of shelving from IKEA. The library probably cost $800k to remodel.
My reaction to the various pictures, for what it's worth, was "what a beautiful place - perhaps it needs more blackboards, but I would love to do maths there".
Re: How have lack of travel and increased social isolation affected mathematics?
#10> No one I talked to had gotten much new math done. They were preoccupied with the news, distracted by kids at home, and pulled between online Zoom meetings.
So, it's a time-management issue, nothing to do with math here.