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I agree with all of this, but don't see what it has to do with age. The best 50-year-old mathematicians also heavily tend to come from privileged backgrounds. P
by throwaway080383 8y ago
I agree with all of this, but don't see what it has to do with age. The best 50-year-old mathematicians also heavily tend to come from privileged backgrounds. Privileged upbringing is simply one required component of what it takes to be among the best mathematicians of your generation.
- sulam 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
- umanwizard 8y agoThe exception that proves the rule.
- sulam 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert I think this rule is just wrong. Some mathematicians come from privilege, some do not. Even for the ones who do, it's rare that they come from _great_ privilege for the time. They are the children of mayors, not kings -- professors and engineers, not the financial aristocracy.
- throwaway080383 8y agoNow it seems you're moving the goalposts on what counts as privilege. Do you have any quantitatively backed reason to believe Fields medallists are more likely to come from the financial aristocracy than say Abel prize winners?
- sulam 8y agoI don’t have access to a biography of all the Field’s medalists. I am simply pointing out that there is a wide distribution of financial privilege in a list of famous mathematicians that I did not choose. I would argue this is unexceptional, but I point it out because I have trouble with the hypothesis that one must come from privilege to get anywhere in math. If anything I should be asking for the quantitative proof of the hypothesis.