4 ms·

Well he worked on it for 4 years (for fun?), so I'm not sure what you mean by walk away with a PhD. To me it seems like he has earned it, and even if he doesn't

by Olphs 4y ago

Well he worked on it for 4 years (for fun?), so I'm not sure what you mean by walk away with a PhD. To me it seems like he has earned it, and even if he doesn't get one he obviously is able to

scrumbledober 4y ago
I think he is implying that this is such an accomplishment that the rest of the process of getting a PhD should just be waived.
- tantalor 4y ago
  That would defeat the purpose of the process.
  - ryanianian 4y ago
    > That would defeat the purpose of the process. On the contrary, this is the exception that proves the rule. The process exists because we can't expect once-in-a-lifetime works to appear from every candidate.
    - alisonkisk 4y ago
      How so? The "process" of getting PhD is writing up his proof and getting it reviewed by the university, and verifying via oral defense that he knows the proof and didn't just plagiarize it.
      - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        It's pretty obvious when someone discovers a proof to a famous problem that it's not plagiarized because no one has proved it before.
        lupire 4y ago
        A word from mathemusician Tom Lehrer (Lobachevsky): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM
    - pknomad 4y ago
      I think there's a precedence for it too. I believe George Dantzig's doctoral advisor offered to accept the solutions to a homework set as a thesis since it solved major open statistical problems.
      - anonymousisme 4y ago
        For those who don't know, here's some background on Dantzig: "During his first year as a doctoral student at the University of California-Berkeley, Dantzig arrived late to the class of Jerzy Neyman, one of the great founders of modern statistics. On the blackboard were two problems that Dantzig assumed to be homework. "A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework—the problems seemed harder to do than usual," Dantzig once recalled. It turned out the conundrums, which Dantzig solved, were two famous unsolved problems in statistics." https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/dantzigobit-052505.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/dantzigobit-052505...
- t_mann 4y ago
  In this specific case the guy has 16 other published papers already, so if he'd wanted to walk away with a PhD he probably could easily have done so already. That being said, I'd imagine that Oxford would be one of the places that could find a way to award a PhD for genuinely outstanding but unusually short work if that had been his only achievement and he'd asked for it. Seems like one of the few universities still run chiefly by academics, not administrators.

by Olphs 4y ago

Well he worked on it for 4 years (for fun?), so I'm not sure what you mean by walk away with a PhD. To me it seems like he has earned it, and even if he doesn't get one he obviously is able to

scrumbledober 4y ago

I think he is implying that this is such an accomplishment that the rest of the process of getting a PhD should just be waived.

tantalor 4y ago
That would defeat the purpose of the process.
- ryanianian 4y ago
  > That would defeat the purpose of the process. On the contrary, this is the exception that proves the rule. The process exists because we can't expect once-in-a-lifetime works to appear from every candidate.
  - alisonkisk 4y ago
    How so? The "process" of getting PhD is writing up his proof and getting it reviewed by the university, and verifying via oral defense that he knows the proof and didn't just plagiarize it.
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      It's pretty obvious when someone discovers a proof to a famous problem that it's not plagiarized because no one has proved it before.
      - lupire 4y ago
        A word from mathemusician Tom Lehrer (Lobachevsky): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM
  - pknomad 4y ago
    I think there's a precedence for it too. I believe George Dantzig's doctoral advisor offered to accept the solutions to a homework set as a thesis since it solved major open statistical problems.
    - anonymousisme 4y ago
      For those who don't know, here's some background on Dantzig: "During his first year as a doctoral student at the University of California-Berkeley, Dantzig arrived late to the class of Jerzy Neyman, one of the great founders of modern statistics. On the blackboard were two problems that Dantzig assumed to be homework. "A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework—the problems seemed harder to do than usual," Dantzig once recalled. It turned out the conundrums, which Dantzig solved, were two famous unsolved problems in statistics." https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/dantzigobit-052505.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/dantzigobit-052505...
t_mann 4y ago
In this specific case the guy has 16 other published papers already, so if he'd wanted to walk away with a PhD he probably could easily have done so already. That being said, I'd imagine that Oxford would be one of the places that could find a way to award a PhD for genuinely outstanding but unusually short work if that had been his only achievement and he'd asked for it. Seems like one of the few universities still run chiefly by academics, not administrators.