91–100 of 150 posts
Reminds me of who were on Fourier’s doctoral defense committee: Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre, who all have a “list of things named after” page on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Jos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Adr...
As a physicist i find this quite comforting. It's good to keep in mind that even the most transformative thinkers in the history of science had reasons to experience impostor syndrome. Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well. No matter how good you are, physics will regularly present you with problems that you can't solve. Statistically speaking, most of the time spent doing science is spent being wr…
It's not a sad story. It's a lesson to others. It's interesting how the story switches between reasons. To me, the most salient is: "could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort". Attention to detail has been one of my largest issues in mistakes I've made, and this reminds me that sometimes that's what is required. And sometimes what's required is putting a draft on arxiv.org and w…
"could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort" We all want to excel so naturally we pick topics which seem easy to us and thus can expect to excel further in them. If we did not do well in some topic earlier, we are not very interested in it, because the best we can hope is to do ok in that subject. I did not like "technical drawing" in my first year and so I found a way to pass wi…
https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence
https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202007/rnoti-p1007.pdf (less technical)
Reminds me of who were on Fourier’s doctoral defense committee: Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre, who all have a “list of things named after” page on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Jos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Adr...
The closest I found was a bio[1], which includes the following:
> The Institute set as a prize competition subject the propagation of heat in solid bodies for the 1811 mathematics prize. Fourier submitted his 1807 memoir together with additional work on the cooling of infinite solids and terrestrial and radiant heat. Only one other entry was received and the committee set up to decide on the award of the prize, Lagrange, Laplace, Malus, Haüy and Legendre, awarded Fourier the prize.
So it's not entirely wrong, but I think that all-star team was not his defense committee.
[1] https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Fourier
I thought the story was that Heisenberg did not know either where the exam was, or when the exam was. :-)
"oral exam" sounds funny. I can't help but imagine a person (whom I visualize as Bryan Cranston for obvious reason) examining someone with their mouth or having their mouth examined :-]
It's how it's described in the UK system, so you get people taking their "French orals" which always sounded funny to me.
As a physicist i find this quite comforting. It's good to keep in mind that even the most transformative thinkers in the history of science had reasons to experience impostor syndrome. Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well. No matter how good you are, physics will regularly present you with problems that you can't solve. Statistically speaking, most of the time spent doing science is spent being wr…
Isn't it a myth? http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unlike the super-specialities of today. Many programs still administer pretty general qualifying exams. Mine was about two-thirds systems neuroscience (close to my thesis topic), with some reinforcement learning (in the Sutton and Barto sense) and genetics of autism on the side. You were strongly encourage to pick at least one topic that would be "mind-expanding" rather than just thesis prep work. My spouse's depar…
Sounds like the classic 4th Floor SHM committee
I'm guessing we just missed each other in grad school?
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-port...