Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
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Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#2Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for six years in complete secrecy while he was at Princeton. Thus it's simply not true that isolated concentration is not possible in the American math world.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#3a culture that thrived on rhetoric and fear
Not any less than the Cold War culture did here. From my experience, citizens of the Soviet Union were a lot more cynical and jaded regarding their governments' fear mongering than their American counterparts.
...all this made mathematicians suspect
Math, suspect? Because it challenged Stalinism? This is nonsense.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#4Through this article I learned of Israel Gelfand, who died October 5, 2009. RIP.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#5a culture that thrived on rhetoric and fear Not any less than the Cold War culture did here. From my experience, citizens of the Soviet Union were a lot more cynical and jaded regarding their governments' fear mongering than their American counterparts. ...all this made mathematicians suspect Math, suspect? Because it challenged Stalinism? This is nonsense.
The irony rings clear even today.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#6Through this article I learned of Israel Gelfand, who died October 5, 2009. RIP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Gelfand
I didn't realize Israel Gelfand had just died. He is by far my favorite author of mathematics textbooks. (I even use his photograph as my avatar on the first website where I used the screenname tokenadult.) His book Algebra
http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773
is an inspirational example of how to make a textbook both humorous and challenging, and is the start of a great series of textbooks on secondary school mathematics from the viewpoint of advanced mathematics. I use that textbook in the supplementary math classes I teach, and the students LOVE the problems. His MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his work in mathematics education (which I just learned about from the Wikipedia article you kindly shared) was very well deserved.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#7Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for six years in complete secrecy while he was at Princeton. Thus it's simply not true that isolated concentration is not possible in the American math world.
Right, the analogy between Wiles/Fermat and Perelman/Poincaré so glaringly contradicts what she's saying ("the American model may not be able to produce a breakthrough like the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture" - huh?) that one has to wonder. Perhaps this explains it?
Masha Gessen's latest book is [...] a story of Grigory Perelman and the Poincaré Conjecture.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#8Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for six years in complete secrecy while he was at Princeton. Thus it's simply not true that isolated concentration is not possible in the American math world.
Isolated concentration does not imply complete secrecy.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#9a culture that thrived on rhetoric and fear Not any less than the Cold War culture did here. From my experience, citizens of the Soviet Union were a lot more cynical and jaded regarding their governments' fear mongering than their American counterparts. ...all this made mathematicians suspect Math, suspect? Because it challenged Stalinism? This is nonsense.
Not math, mathematicians. And the reasons didn't have to make a lick of sense for Stalin to want to purge you and your entire field.
Re: Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
#10Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for six years in complete secrecy while he was at Princeton. Thus it's simply not true that isolated concentration is not possible in the American math world.
It's possible, but the culture is not conducive to it. According to Simon Singh's book on the subject, Wiles had to go as far as stockpiling several years' worth of conference papers in advance in unrelated areas so he could submit one occasionally while he was really working on FLT, just to affect the appearance of productivity. He also taught a phony graduate course in which his main collaborator enrolled and most of the other students dropped out, just so they could use the class time to thrash out some of the details.