7 ms·
I'm not a mathematician, but the story of Yitang Zhang desperately makes me want this paper to be correct. > Prior to getting back to academia, he worked for s
by mabbo 4y ago
I'm not a mathematician, but the story of Yitang Zhang desperately makes me want this paper to be correct.
> Prior to getting back to academia, he worked for several years as an accountant and a delivery worker for a New York City restaurant. He also worked in a motel in Kentucky and in a Subway sandwich shop. A profile published in the Quanta Magazine reports that Zhang used to live in his car during the initial job-hunting days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang
- kenjackson 4y agoSomeone needs to make a movie about his life, or at least a documentary.
- gavagai691 4y agoThere is a documentary, but I can't attest to its quality (I haven't watched it yet): http://www.zalafilms.com/films/countingabout.html http://www.zalafilms.com/films/countingabout.html.
- kenjackson 4y agoHmm... thanks, it looks quite good. But why is streaming rental for 24 hours? Why can't we do rentals for two weeks for videos? Is there a good reason to make it so difficult to stream? I don't want to watch it a million times. I just want to make it through once, but it takes me several sittings typically to finish a movie.
- gavagai691 4y agoI was thinking about watching this documentary two years ago. That sounds like the reason that I decided not to.
- mikeyouse 4y agoLooks like it's available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/countingfrominfinityyitangzhangandthetwinprimeconjecture2015documentary7au3cikb2za https://archive.org/details/countingfrominfinityyitangzhanga...
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago> But why is streaming rental for 24 hours? Money / capitalism.
- SantalBlush 4y agoSadly, they would probably make it a schmaltzy Oscar-grab of a movie, like they did with Ramanujan's story.
- lupire 4y agoThe Eternal Triangle, With Brigitte Bardot playing part of hypotenuse.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoGood luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).
- joenot443 4y agoThere have been many, many films made about Srinivasa Ramanujan. I'd particularly recommend the 2015 one, The Man Who Knew Infinity, I found it super charming.
- SantalBlush 4y agoAnd the movies about figures like these that do exist seem to have roughly the same story, relying heavily on the "socially inept genius" trope.
- 149764 4y agoThere is a tv show about Einstein, well, only the first season is about him.
- arrow7000 4y agoWhich one?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- defrost 4y agoN Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős is a decent enough documentary about a specific mathematician. Colors of Math breezes across six contemporary mathematicians.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoI hope to see a movie about Perelman, too.
- hubatrix 4y agoThere is a documentary: Counting from Infinity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBADiHU_0Wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBADiHU_0Wg
- ekianjo 4y agoWhy everything has to be a movie?
- hirundo 4y agoI am updating my assumptions about Subway Sandwich Artists. When they seem unfocused on the artwork at hand it may be because they are thinking more important thoughts.
- benrapscallion 4y agoDouglas Prasher who cloned the green fluorescent protein became a courtesy cab driver at a dealership, until he was brought back to the lab by Roger Tsien. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-bad-luck-and-bad-networking-cost-douglas-prasher-a-nobel-prize https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-bad-luck-and-bad-n...
- ahzhou 4y agoWhile not common, I know of other Chinese diaspora in North America with similar stories. Many graduates from post Cultural Revolution China left the country in 90's and found the language barrier (and accompanying discrimination) too high to overcome. The man delivering your fried rice might have a PhD.
- x0x0 4y agoAn unfortunate parallel: the best physics professor (unfortunately, just an adjunct) I ever had was a Russian immigrant. He quit teaching to go run a blini restaurant because it paid way more :(
- ta988 4y agoThis is so true and still the case. I've seen so many highly skilled immigrants passed over for politics and image reasons... Academia is ruthless but for the wrong reasons.
- computerfriend 4y agoI had so many Russian mathematics professors. They dominate the field, for obvious historical reasons.
- rosywoozlechan 4y agoWhy is this :( though? The market is working and filling a market opportunity. Maybe he likes running his own business? Unless he was being discriminated against for being a Russian immigrant and treated unfairly?
- arrow7000 4y agoBecause the world would be better off having people of that calibre making progress on outstanding problems in maths than having one more mediocre restaurant in it
- 4y ago
- Terretta 4y ago> worked in a Subway sandwich shop FTA: In Kentucky, he became involved with a group interested in Chinese democracy. Its slogan was “Freedom, Democracy, Rule of Law, and Pluralism.” A member of the group, a chemist in a lab, opened a Subway franchise as a means of raising money. “Since Tom was a genius at numbers,” another member of the group told me, “he was invited to help him.” Zhang kept the books. Quite a different feel to that characterization.