The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
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Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#2Yes, he is a different class. Different from all those mathematicians working at Harvard, Princeton, etc.
That adjunct job gave him sanity to solve the problem. In the case of Grigori Perelman, these universities (Princeton, Harvard) did not want to give tenure job after his proving Soul Conjecture; this was during his postdoc at Courant NYU.
Of course, these math guys wanna offer a tenure track position, which woulda prevented him from proving Poincare conjecture. He went back to Russia, spent time in isolation for 8 years or so. Proved it. Once he published the paper on arXiv, the shithead professors at Princeton, Columbia want him back, so that they can be co-authors of his paper on poincare conjecture or these universities can appear on the paper a la affliation: you see, these elite universities love to show "Mr X from Princeton solved poincare conjecture".
Another chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman for the same conjecture.
It is a big mess out there. Zhang somehow used his adjunct/tutor job to spend time in number theory. Perelman used his postdoc fellowship savings to solve his problem. IN Zhang's case, he got the tenureship after his proof; Perelman gave up math.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#3Yes, he is a different class. Different from all those mathematicians working at Harvard, Princeton, etc. That adjunct job gave him sanity to solve the problem. In the case of Grigori Perelman, these universities (Princeton, Harvard) did not want to give tenure job after his proving Soul Conjecture; this was during his postdoc at Courant NYU. Of course, these math guys wanna offer a tenure track position, which would…
Thank you for you comment. Very interesting information just like the article itself.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#4get rid of new yorker = paywall
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#5Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago.
I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate.
Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about age? If a 60 year old proves the Riemann Hypothesis, why is he or she ineligible? This happened notably with Andrew Wiles. He (indirectly) proved Fermat's Last Theorem and was rewarded a "special plaque" instead of the Fields Medal for the crime of waiting until after his 40th trip around the sun to work on it.
There's also the issue of economic pressure. We expect our young minds to solve "real problems" and to want to make a lot of money doing it. Pure mathematicians get to "hide" in academia when times are good and are often on the street when they aren't so good. In the absence of a focus on supporting the arts (including math) through patronage etc it is just hard for young people to get in the field. Older people have more time. Let them create without lowered expectations.
For a deeply beautiful subject with a lot of very smart people, this whole age thing is just scratch-your-head puzzling.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#6get rid of new yorker = paywall
I too have read my last complimentary article of the month, and am stuck behind the paywall. Could someone paste the article here?
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#7Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago. I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate. Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about age? If a 60…
Humans are often silly and irrational and like making up arbitrary rules for the games they play. Don't lose too much time scratching your head about these things, or you'll quickly end up bald.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#8Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago. I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate. Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about age? If a 60…
At the risk of downvotes, I will state a whole bunch of [Citation Needed] BS, which is, nevertheless, empirically true & in Hardy's favor -
1. Cerebral atrophy affects left brain disproportionately more than the right 2. Math is predominantly a left-brain activity. 3. Ergo, short-term memory & dexterity with numbers generally degrades with age ( supposedly peaking at 25 & declining from then on).
Most math majors I've spoken to ( from prodigies to professors & people in between ) attest to the fact that they were much sharper when they were quite young. It isn't that they become dumber as they age, more like - they pick up a different kind of math to compensate for some of the other math that required them to exercise their symbolic manipulation skills at superior pace, which they have now lost.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#9get rid of new yorker = paywall
I too have read my last complimentary article of the month, and am stuck behind the paywall. Could someone paste the article here?
Here's a pastebin link, the article was a bit long to break into comments. I hope that's okay.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#10For anyone behind the paywall, here's a pastebin link. The article was a bit long to break into comments.