Talk:Mathematician

From Academic Kids

The Physicist page organizes people by the century they lived in. I find that helpful. Should we do it on our page also? --AxelBoldt

If we do this, then we should do it properly, arranging them by order of birth, rather than mixing alphabetical and chronological order as is done with the physicists. However, I'm not sure this is really better than an ordinary alphabetical listing. Ideally we should have both, but that's probably too difficult to maintain.
Zundark, 2001-08-11

Maybe at one point we will have a Mathematical timeline just like Computing timeline and that would take care of the chronological order. --AxelBoldt

Wouldn't it be advisable to use only one alphabetical list? What's the point of listing living and dead mathematicians separately? What happens if a hitherto living mathematician dies? Maths is supposed to be timeless -- that's one of its greatest charms ;). -- Piotr Gasiorowski

I agree, the division between living and dead is not important. If we give dates of birth and death, then the living ones can be easily identified by not having a death date yet. --AxelBoldt

Is it correct to use characters as Č, Š and Ž herein or should I put them away? I don't know how, for example, Slovene persons are listed in English sources. We don't use trancriptions for names as it is done for Russian names. I can't use swaps as Ch, Sh or Zh.

Best regards.
XJamRastafire

I would use Č, etc., (as we have been doing for Stone-Čech compactification). Unfortunately, some people won't see them correctly, but they should be OK for most people. The main alternative is just to drop the accents, but I don't like to do that. --Zundark, 2002 Feb 25

--Thank you very much Zundark for your encouraging words. I am glad that the most important Slovene mathematicians could find their places among the world's ones. I shall use in my articles of Russian people their original names with latinic transcription as for example in ( Юлиан КарлВасилйевич Сохотски )

I hope this would clarify some undistinctnesses of their names. I am also pleased that your native language is English, so you can correct the most us who don't speak English 100 % --XJamRastafire (2002.02.25)

It's funny situation here. Zundark you sort the list in English alphabetical order. This seems to be OK. But its funny for example for me. To search Zhukowski (Slovene = #381;ukovski) under Z and not Ž it takes time for nonEnglish users. Because of these things English version looses something. Ordering of something is almost an art. Some banal ASCII code "screwed" all it up. I think Windows 95 had solved this quite well but bitter taste remains. These kind of (and specially of mathematicians and people) really bother me. We won't be able to make such transformations as:

[Sorting A] -(whatever)-> [Sorting B]

very succesfully. But it would be very desired. I wonder how these things are arranged elsewhere.
XJam 3 Wednesday (2002.02.27)

Adding huge quantities of Slovenian mathematicians to this page is unacceptable - it completely distorts the page, and is likely to encourage someone else to do the same for their own favourite country. I suggest a separate page for Slovenian mathematicians, which can be linked from the bottom of this page. It can even use Slovenian alphabetical order, since it will only contain Slovenian names. --Zundark, 2002 Feb 28

Yes, Zundark a great idea. I shall implement it as soon as I would be able. Or someone else who has some knowledge about the subject //Slovene mathematician| Slovenian mathematicians// According to my knowledge of English language adjective Slovene is the same as Slovenian. Please correct me if I am wrong if you know something on it. Why useing two different words for the same thing. One of my acquaintances said English language is so non - explicit, but I haeavy disagree with this opinion. Just think on programming and for reserved words as for instance in C. --XJam 4 Thursday (2002.02.28) (0,1st ed.)

As far as I know, there is no distinction between "Slovene" and "Slovenian" in English. I don't know which is best. Wikipedia seems to use "Slovene" more than "Slovenian" at the moment. --Zundark, 2002 Feb 28

Perhaps another approach is that those Slovene mathematicians remains in the world's list just to keep track on them. These are just the most prominent mathematicians of 20th and 21st century from Slovenia and some from earlier. Another thought is: does anywhere in the world exist the perfect list of all mathematicians of all times. Just think of Asimov's list of scientists. Or on Sloane's famous enumeration of integer sequences. On my home PC I have my own enumeration which is derived from TeX macros and shurely won't fit in Wikipedia, but who knows. My list contains over 1200 mathematicians and over 1600 astronomers from all over the world and from all times. So *.dvi preview of this list shows for example [1624] Zhukowski as the last one in it. I am looking for ZZ Top's kind of name of certain mathematician to have surname with the property to be Ω liked. Any help for this? Another list which can be simply derived from alphabeticall order is of cource the timeliked list. In this it would be [1624] The youngest world's astronomer, (mathematician, ...) but questions remains at what time one comes a mathematician. When he graduates, when he first publishes his results of certain researches, when he first with LaTeX writes his high-school textbook, when he gets Field's medal, when he dies in a Galois duel, ...? --XJam 4 Thursday (2002.02.28) (1->,2nd ed.,3rd ed.)

There is a big list of mathematicians [on the MacTutor site (http://turnbull.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Indexes/Full_Alph.html)]. We shouldn't try to list all mathematicians in the Mathematician article, only the most famous. Keeping all the Slovenian mathematicians here is not an option, which is why I suggested a separate page. (Any who are sufficiently well-known that they are on the MacTutor list can also be listed in the Mathematician article, of course.) --Zundark, 2002 Feb 28

Yes. MacTutor site is one of the best I've ever seen. But unfortunately I haven't found yet some of the most important Slovene and well known mathematicians as Josip Plemelj is. Also their article about Jurij Vega is also unworthy of such prominent University. I wonder what Winchester University got to say on it. I tried to correct this directly by sending some adds to MacTutor but obviously I haven't come in a row hitherto or it is just because I am just one unfree copywriter or happy wikipedian. I hope here in Wikipedia I won't be sacked out of it... One drop of guilt goes perhaps to [[DMFA S]], Slovene Society for Mathematicians, Physicist and Astronomers of Slovenia. --XJam 4 Thursday (2002.02.28) (3->4th ed.)

Could add more jokes but shouldn't there be jokee'pedia for that?

The article says that "a misconception that everything in mathematics is already known is widespread among persons not learned in that field". I have not encountered anyone who thinks that. Examples, statistics, source? --Ian Maxwell 16:08, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I would be surprised if there were any formal studies of this. On the other hand, basically every person I've met that is not a mathematician, scientist, or technically-minded academic of some kind, thinks this. And I am not alone. My fellow graduate students (at least the one I've discussed this with) all have had the same experience. I've been involved in numerous discussions related to this on sci.math and I've found other posters have had this experience. It also seems that whenever I read articles about math education the author who is either a math educator or research mathematician believes that the average person believes "everything in mathematics is already known". I can only conclude these people believe the same as me because they've had the same experience.

You are indeed a very lucky person, Ian, to never have had this experience. --Chan-Ho Suh 00:29, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

I have not had this experience, but a related one: "So HOW do you do research in math?" The question isn't based on the idea that everything's been discovered in math, but rather a misconception of how research works: most people think of research as a process of experimentation, as in the physical sciences. Being in combinatorics, it's easy to pose simple mathematical questions which are unanswered, or only recently answered. --Dcclark 04:09, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

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Some inner aspects

User:DigitalCharacter wrote a new section:

Achievements of mathematicians may vary. A mathematician with great achievements is considered as genius. Geniuses are extremely rare. This is one of the reasons they get a lot of attention and admiration (and critics) from ancient times. All broadly known mathematicians are in fact geniuses in field of mathematics and abstract thinking.

Glory plays an important role in whole history of mathematics. It is a key factor of motivation. There is no patent over theories and theorems (except some algorithms in computer science), so money that can be made in mathematics is not much and glory is almost the only prize.

I find this horribly biased and distorted, particularly the material about "glory". The material about "genius" uses a notion of genius I don't believe most mathematicians would agree with. It also seems irrelevant to this article. There are geniuses in every subject. Pointing this out is well, pointless. --Chan-Ho Suh 00:34, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Because of the reasons I've stated right above, I've rewrote the section, and in addition I've retitled it "Motivation" -- this gives it more focus. I feel the result is much fairer and accurate than before. --Chan-Ho Suh 14:24, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

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