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>They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient
by tubby12345 5y ago
>They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient reading ability in two of those to read the current and historical math literature in those languages.
This a thing of the past, from a time when people in the USSR still published things of note in Russian (the same for the other countries/languages your mentioned). Today everyone publishes in English and I don't of a single math department that still has that as a requirement.
I also don't know of any other such extracurricular requirements for any program (can't even imagine what it would be - community service???)
- hervature 5y agoHarvard still does it: https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-study/ https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-stud... Go to language exam.
- tubby12345 5y agoHmm must be the last (leave it to Harvard to persist in the persist in the pretence I guess) but fwiw this is the entirety of the task: >Students may request to substitute the Italian language exam if it is relevant to their area of mathematics Which is far far short of "learn a language". But these requirements were always like this (a pretentious formality completely insignificant in comparison to the actual research and course work).