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Is it just me or does it seem like there something like there were a lot of celebrity-level STEM heroes to come out of the early 20th century. These folks all s

Is it just me or does it seem like there something like there were a lot of celebrity-level STEM heroes to come out of the early 20th century. These folks all seemed to work together closely. Maybe these things take time, but it just doesn't seem like there is anything remotely like this going on today, despite far greater access to education and increases in global population. Is it perhaps that the limelight is less on mathematicians than it was during the early 20th century?

acidburnNSA 6y ago
It's not just you. This whole group of (Hungarian) scientists is known as "The Martians" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
ykl 6y ago
They all worked closely together because they all worked on the Manhattan Project. When there’s a single huge government project requiring the nation’s smartest people and on which the survival of the nation depends, it shouldn’t be too surprising that all of the top scientists and mathematicians and engineers all end up working together. :) The fact that so many of them specifically grew up in Hungary, went to school in Germany, and came to the United States is interesting to note though!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sharlin 6y ago
  They immigrated because they could see that another war was brewing in Europe. So basically the US can thank the Nazis for that. They all had Jewish heritage (which is a very interesting fact in itself!) so it was sort of personal to them as well.
- kaba0 6y ago
  There is interesting blog post about it here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPJKZyPCvap4Fven8/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPJKZyPCvap4Fven8/the-atomic...
chrisbrandow 6y ago
It was a relatively small community, even before Manhattan project they all knew each other. Academic science is still very much like this, but the difference now is that there are so many more scientists, very few of their results are known to a wide audience.
allemagne 6y ago
Matching the impact von Neumann made by himself in the 20th century might take dozens of von Neumanns today.
- yosito 6y ago
  Or one Katalin Karikó.
anonytrary 6y ago
> Is it perhaps that the limelight is less on mathematicians than it was during the early 20th century? Everything make sense looking backwards. It is quite possible there are people who exist today in various fields (think AI, crypto, space, vehicles) who will go down in history the same way. Kids will look back in 50 years citing their names, just as we cite Dirac, Einstein, Feynman, Heisenberg, etc. To us, these people are just "scientists", and "engineers" who are also alive at the same time we are. The reward is reaped years later. Quantum Mechanics' reward was computers and health tech for the most part, but most of that truly started popping off long after the Manhattan project celebs died.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  How is computing downwind from QM? I would trace computing's lineage back to the invention of the transistor or the earlier vacuum tube (advancements in electrical engineering, and the beginning of electronics), and logically back to Boole. I don't think QM has had its payoff yet, but certainly general and special relativity have paid off in things like GPS, and probably more examples that I don't know about.
  - dralley 6y ago
    Transistors are very much based on quantum mechanics. Especially after the early 2000s.
peter303 6y ago
Two words: SILICON VALLEY. Plus a lot of incest with Stanford grad students and young Stanford professors.
- astrange 6y ago
  All of these Hungarian STEM heroes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)) were pre-Silicon Valley people. It was still Valley of Heart's Delight back then. Not sure who their successors were. I guess there's Knuth.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Which episode are you referring to?
TheTrotters 6y ago
Scientists become famous partly due to their accomplishments and partly due to their life story. Would John Nash be famous if it weren’t for his tragic struggles with mental health? Would I know about Feynman if it weren’t for “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman”, his safecracking, and the topless bars? Would Stephen Hawking be a household name if he weren’t disabled? WW2 gave a fascinating context to many scientific projects and made lives of these scientists more colorful than they would have been otherwise. Ditto for the Cold War. It’s up for debate if there’s a slowdown in science nowadays. But it’s certain that lives of those who do science are much more boring to the outsiders. Papers, conferences, labs, petty academic squabbles, fights over funding, perhaps some consulting for the government or the private sector. It’s much harder to create a mythology out of that. When I think of famous 21st century mathematicians I think of Perelman (a recluse who proved a famous conjecture and refused the Fields Medal) or Zhang (worked as an accountant and at a Subway, then as a lecturer at UNH before making a breakthrough on the twin primes conjecture). Ordinary geniuses who went from top graduate programs to top professorships are comparatively anonymous to the general public.
- throw99909 6y ago
  I would offer Terry Tao as a counterexample. The only thing strange about him is how, well, not-strange he is!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ndr 6y ago
    That seems more a point in favor than a counter. Terry Tao is surely very accomplished, but is he anywhere nearly as famous?
    - TheTrotters 6y ago
      Besides if Tao has a claim to fame among the general public it’s because he was a child prodigy (a good story!). It’s hard to find some article about him that doesn’t mention his extraordinary childhood accomplishments.
blueblisters 6y ago
I think research has become a lot bigger, more accessible, collaborative and derivative since the early 20th century. There are probably tons of graduate students with the intellect of a Einstein or a von Neumann who will likely never get the same recognition because they will be competing with (or working with) others for the same breakthroughs. We had a lot of early "heroes" in Artificial Intelligence, but their accomplishments were eclipsed by newer breakthroughs in a short amount of time by equally smart people. Overall, this is great for humanity since we are pushing boundaries much quicker than was possible earlier.
yosito 6y ago
> it just doesn't seem like there is anything remotely like this going on today It seems to me like the STEM heroes these days are working together on vaccine technologies. If you follow developments in mRNA technology you'll see there's a lot of international cooperation. It seems to me that current collaboration is on an even greater scale than the STEM heroes of the early 20th century, but it probably won't become clear to many until we look on it in retrospect 50 years from now.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
It was a much smaller field back then. Reading about computing in the 70's (especially ARPANET), the same handful of names keep popping up. Also, they may be celebrities to us. But ask the average person who John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Edsger Dijkstra, or Paul Erdős was, and they'll probably have no idea.
bick_nyers 6y ago
I think mathematicians only become famous when they are being driven by/driving an industrial revolution. Just look at the digital revolution. I have never heard of George Boole until a quick Google search, but he laid down the framework for Boolean Algebra in 1850. Claude Shannon is a much more recognized name, even though the impact of information theory is smaller than that of boolean algebra (considering that BA is a prerequisite). Is it possible that George Boole was as popular in the 1930's as Shannon is now? Maybe. Perhaps the fame of mathematicians is staggered, as the applications often drive their fame, and the applications often come ~50 years later.

acidburnNSA 6y ago

It's not just you. This whole group of (Hungarian) scientists is known as "The Martians" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

ykl 6y ago

They all worked closely together because they all worked on the Manhattan Project. When there’s a single huge government project requiring the nation’s smartest people and on which the survival of the nation depends, it shouldn’t be too surprising that all of the top scientists and mathematicians and engineers all end up working together. :) The fact that so many of them specifically grew up in Hungary, went to school in Germany, and came to the United States is interesting to note though!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Sharlin 6y ago
They immigrated because they could see that another war was brewing in Europe. So basically the US can thank the Nazis for that. They all had Jewish heritage (which is a very interesting fact in itself!) so it was sort of personal to them as well.
kaba0 6y ago
There is interesting blog post about it here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPJKZyPCvap4Fven8/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPJKZyPCvap4Fven8/the-atomic...

chrisbrandow 6y ago

It was a relatively small community, even before Manhattan project they all knew each other. Academic science is still very much like this, but the difference now is that there are so many more scientists, very few of their results are known to a wide audience.

allemagne 6y ago

Matching the impact von Neumann made by himself in the 20th century might take dozens of von Neumanns today.

yosito 6y ago
Or one Katalin Karikó.

anonytrary 6y ago

> Is it perhaps that the limelight is less on mathematicians than it was during the early 20th century? Everything make sense looking backwards. It is quite possible there are people who exist today in various fields (think AI, crypto, space, vehicles) who will go down in history the same way. Kids will look back in 50 years citing their names, just as we cite Dirac, Einstein, Feynman, Heisenberg, etc. To us, these people are just "scientists", and "engineers" who are also alive at the same time we are. The reward is reaped years later. Quantum Mechanics' reward was computers and health tech for the most part, but most of that truly started popping off long after the Manhattan project celebs died.

beaconstudios 6y ago
How is computing downwind from QM? I would trace computing's lineage back to the invention of the transistor or the earlier vacuum tube (advancements in electrical engineering, and the beginning of electronics), and logically back to Boole. I don't think QM has had its payoff yet, but certainly general and special relativity have paid off in things like GPS, and probably more examples that I don't know about.
- dralley 6y ago
  Transistors are very much based on quantum mechanics. Especially after the early 2000s.

peter303 6y ago

Two words: SILICON VALLEY. Plus a lot of incest with Stanford grad students and young Stanford professors.

astrange 6y ago
All of these Hungarian STEM heroes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)) were pre-Silicon Valley people. It was still Valley of Heart's Delight back then. Not sure who their successors were. I guess there's Knuth.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Which episode are you referring to?

TheTrotters 6y ago

Scientists become famous partly due to their accomplishments and partly due to their life story. Would John Nash be famous if it weren’t for his tragic struggles with mental health? Would I know about Feynman if it weren’t for “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman”, his safecracking, and the topless bars? Would Stephen Hawking be a household name if he weren’t disabled? WW2 gave a fascinating context to many scientific projects and made lives of these scientists more colorful than they would have been otherwise. Ditto for the Cold War. It’s up for debate if there’s a slowdown in science nowadays. But it’s certain that lives of those who do science are much more boring to the outsiders. Papers, conferences, labs, petty academic squabbles, fights over funding, perhaps some consulting for the government or the private sector. It’s much harder to create a mythology out of that. When I think of famous 21st century mathematicians I think of Perelman (a recluse who proved a famous conjecture and refused the Fields Medal) or Zhang (worked as an accountant and at a Subway, then as a lecturer at UNH before making a breakthrough on the twin primes conjecture). Ordinary geniuses who went from top graduate programs to top professorships are comparatively anonymous to the general public.

throw99909 6y ago
I would offer Terry Tao as a counterexample. The only thing strange about him is how, well, not-strange he is!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ndr 6y ago
  That seems more a point in favor than a counter. Terry Tao is surely very accomplished, but is he anywhere nearly as famous?
  - TheTrotters 6y ago
    Besides if Tao has a claim to fame among the general public it’s because he was a child prodigy (a good story!). It’s hard to find some article about him that doesn’t mention his extraordinary childhood accomplishments.

blueblisters 6y ago

I think research has become a lot bigger, more accessible, collaborative and derivative since the early 20th century. There are probably tons of graduate students with the intellect of a Einstein or a von Neumann who will likely never get the same recognition because they will be competing with (or working with) others for the same breakthroughs. We had a lot of early "heroes" in Artificial Intelligence, but their accomplishments were eclipsed by newer breakthroughs in a short amount of time by equally smart people. Overall, this is great for humanity since we are pushing boundaries much quicker than was possible earlier.

yosito 6y ago

> it just doesn't seem like there is anything remotely like this going on today It seems to me like the STEM heroes these days are working together on vaccine technologies. If you follow developments in mRNA technology you'll see there's a lot of international cooperation. It seems to me that current collaboration is on an even greater scale than the STEM heroes of the early 20th century, but it probably won't become clear to many until we look on it in retrospect 50 years from now.

toomanybeersies 6y ago

It was a much smaller field back then. Reading about computing in the 70's (especially ARPANET), the same handful of names keep popping up. Also, they may be celebrities to us. But ask the average person who John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Edsger Dijkstra, or Paul Erdős was, and they'll probably have no idea.

bick_nyers 6y ago

I think mathematicians only become famous when they are being driven by/driving an industrial revolution. Just look at the digital revolution. I have never heard of George Boole until a quick Google search, but he laid down the framework for Boolean Algebra in 1850. Claude Shannon is a much more recognized name, even though the impact of information theory is smaller than that of boolean algebra (considering that BA is a prerequisite). Is it possible that George Boole was as popular in the 1930's as Shannon is now? Maybe. Perhaps the fame of mathematicians is staggered, as the applications often drive their fame, and the applications often come ~50 years later.