Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#21

Post by jdonaldson »

raincom wrote: post #2

Yes, 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…

It's pretty damning evidence if two of the biggest math breakthroughs needed to occur outside of our best universities.

Arxiv is turning into a great tool to spread academic ideas, and is in some ways replacing the role of traditional journals. However, how do we replace the funding side of the equation? In both of these breakthrough cases, it seems the researchers found a loophole or used their personal savings.

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#22

Post by hybridthesis »

raincom wrote: post #2

Yes, 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…

I assume by "chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman", you mean the defamatory article written by The New Yorker regarding on Shing-Tung Yau. That accusatory article was written by an outsider with no regard to reality. For a correct account from within the mathematical community, see http://doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf.

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#23

Post by littletimmy »

hybridthesis wrote: post #22
raincom wrote: post #2

Yes, 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…

I assume by "chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman", you mean the defamatory article written by The New Yorker regarding on Shing-Tung Yau. That accusatory article was written by an outsider with no regard to reality. For a correct account from within the mathematical community, see http://doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf .

While that may be true, there is no denying that Yau is a pretty divisive figure. He seems as interested in building his image in China and making the Chinese nation proud, than he is in doing real math. I can see why this attitude would rub some mathematicians the wrong way.

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#24

Post by convivialdingo »

dxbydt wrote: post #8
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

Hardy'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'v…

I don't want to disagree with such studies (as I agree with them), but at the same time there is a tendency to derive absolutes when looking at such studies. Reality doesn't tend to support absolutes, however. Biological studies like these still fall onto bell curves, and outliers exist on such spectrums.

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#25

Post by sdenton4 »

hurin wrote: post #20
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

Hardy'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…

I think the degradation with age as in part bio/physiological might also be in part a matter of adjustment to circumstance. That is to say the really hard problems in mathematics (or physics) one generally doesn't get to work on full-time (since it's very likely that one will work on them for years without producing any results); the most likely path in academia is therefore to do mediocre -to fairly good research th…

Once you get enough of an institution built up around you - grad students to bootstrap, grants to write, what have you - there's so much less time to just work on the problems that interest you. I think there's less and less space in Academia for the 'individual contributor.'

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#27

Post by raincom »

hybridthesis wrote: post #22
raincom wrote: post #2

Yes, 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…

I assume by "chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman", you mean the defamatory article written by The New Yorker regarding on Shing-Tung Yau. That accusatory article was written by an outsider with no regard to reality. For a correct account from within the mathematical community, see http://doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf .

There is something unethical about Yau. Here is more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Destiny#Revision_of_th...

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#28

Post by guelo »

This author immediately made me hate him starting with the first paragraph. What was the point of that first paragraph? And I'm OK with adding some color throughout to liven up a story but I felt like this author was just wasting my time to try to show off that he's a writer. What an asshole.

Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery

#30

Post by eng_monkey »

raincom wrote: post #2

Yes, 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…

> Mr X from Princeton solved poincare conjecture

Most likely Prof or Dr instead of Mr ;-)

Post reply on HN