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The story told to me by my set theory teacher back in college was that a Paul Cohen was an Analyst who attended a symposium on Set Theory and said "hey, this is
by mcphage 6y ago
The story told to me by my set theory teacher back in college was that a Paul Cohen was an Analyst who attended a symposium on Set Theory and said "hey, this is all the set theorist do? This is easy!". He then switched his field to Set Theory, developed forcing, and proved a bunch of important open questions in the field.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I’d like to believe.
- wannabebarista 6y agoI've heard a version of this too. With the additional details that after the result was announced, he struggled and took quite a bit of time to get it ready for publication.
- cwzwarich 6y agoI don’t really think this is true. See this historical article: http://math.bu.edu/people/aki/14.pdf http://math.bu.edu/people/aki/14.pdf He was drawn to logic by discussions with Feferman and worked unsuccessfully on other problems in logic before moving to independence questions in set theory.
- mcphage 6y agoAlright then. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.