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> Although Ramsey was employed by Cambridge as a mathematician, he only published eight pages of pure mathematics. But those eight pages yielded impressive resu
by kleiba 2y ago
> Although Ramsey was employed by Cambridge as a mathematician, he only published eight pages of pure mathematics. But those eight pages yielded impressive results.
Be that as it may, but with just eight papers to your name, you'd be gone out of any position in today's academia faster than you can say "key performance indicator".
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoEight pages.
- kleiba 2y agoOh, wow, I missed that.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago> those eight pages yielded impressive results. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is the most wild understatement I've read all year. Or were they going for deadpan humor? Ramsey's responsible for the famous theory that bears his name. The core concept of Ramsey Theory is this: Regardless of how extensive and complex a system S is, and no matter how large a positive integer n is, it is possible to find a sufficiently large super system Q that includes S. In such a way, no matter how Q is colored using n colors, Q will always contain a monochromatic copy of S. So Ramsey Theory explores the mathematics of coloring, but it has exerted tremendous influence on 20th century mathematics more generally -- it works to elucidate a lot of notions surrounding infinite and finite sets. In fact, it's clearly among the most influential 20th century mathematical theories; Paul Erdős' storied career owed an awful lot to Ramsey, and Ramsey theory also inspired Ramsey's friend Ludwig Wittgenstein's work in analytic philosophy.
- tarentel 2y agoI was curious about this as well. Apparently he died when he was 26. By today's standards most people would still be working on their PhD at that age.
- QuesnayJr 2y agoDidn't Yitang Zhang end up a full professor at UC Santa Barbara on the basis of a single paper?
- pfdietz 2y agoThe key indicator was having a branch of mathematics named after you.