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Sometimes people act like guys like Bill Gates or Elon Musk are coming from deep personal scientific knowledge and accomplishment, but they're absolutely nothin
by nybsjytm 2y ago
Sometimes people act like guys like Bill Gates or Elon Musk are coming from deep personal scientific knowledge and accomplishment, but they're absolutely nothing compared to Simons. His contributions to geometry in the 60s and 70s, from minimal surfaces to Berger's classification of special holonomy to Chern-Simons theory, were fundamental and are still well-remembered. His name would be known even if he'd never gone into finance or philanthropy.
- lupire 2y agoBill Gates did graduate study in math and computer science as a first-year undergraduate at Harvard College, and published the fastest pancake-sort algorithm (held the record for 30 years), before dropping not to start Microsoft. And of course he invented Microsoft's early technology, which advanced the state of the art. He was highly likely to be a great computer scientist if he chose to stay in school.
- nybsjytm 2y agoI can read both the Gates-Papadimitriou paper and Simons' work, and it doesn't compare. Maybe Gates could have been a great scientist, who knows, but no matter how many advanced classes he took, he never was. It doesn't even matter if he got good grades in them.
- paulpauper 2y agoBill gates did math 55. legit smart guy
- nybsjytm 2y agoYou don't need to be a smart guy to take math 55, nor is 'being a smart guy' what I'm even talking about.
- paulpauper 2y agomaybe you should have written what you meant to talk about
- nybsjytm 2y agoFriend, there's a world of difference between being a smart guy who completed a hard math class and being one of the world's best researchers in differential geometry.
- paulpauper 2y agoBill Gates had the aptitude to be a leading researcher at probably anything if he set out to do it. He was already doing coding whilst working on math courses, so his attention was divided. Simons focused 100% on math until doing trading.
- nybsjytm 2y ago> Bill Gates had the aptitude to be a leading researcher at probably anything if he set out to do it. He was already doing coding whilst working on math courses, so his attention was divided. Simons focused 100% on math until doing trading. Ok, I guess you're right. A smart guy who completes a hard math class and is even also doing coding can probably do anything he wants.
- jeffhwang 2y agoI was classmates with several people who did well in Math 55, and knew some people who were teaching fellows for it. Very smart folks but they themselves would not have compared themselves to Simons as mathematicians, esp. at age 18.