4 ms·

How Math Got Its ‘Nobel’

38 points by wallflower 12y ago

atmosx 12y ago
I always had mixed feelings about Alfred Nobel. A person who spent his life producing guns, then created the Nobel prizes, who often go to people that absolutely do not deserve it for political reasons ridiculing the prizes (e.g. Nobel for peace to Obama, G. W. Bush run for it and came 2nd!), but economics Nobels is also highly disputable. As for Math the article states: > Nobel omitted mathematics simply because it was not as important to him as other endeavors were. Any person who has looked at any science at even small depth needs mathematics to express concepts. Mathematics are the lingua franca of the universe. You can't do Physics, Chemistry, Biology or even social sciences like Economics without a basic understanding of mathematics. So IMHO Nobel (as I said I have mixed feelings for him), new that mathematics goes without saying and didn't create a Nobel for Mathematics. The fields medals is an excellent prize though, so IMHO there's no real gap.
- chasing 12y ago
  Maybe someone who knows more about this can confirm, but I've heard that Nobel left out mathematics because he felt it was too abstract or esoteric in comparison with these other sciences which (he felt) had more of a chance of directly improving the world. Maybe an analogy would be that while he promoted a prize for literature, he didn't promote a prize for typography or spelling. Not saying I agree with that idea, but this is what I've heard. Again: Someone who knows better, please correct my misunderstanding if I'm wrong.
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    His intentions for the prizes were a bit different than what they developed to. He envisioned that the science prizes would have a more practical slant and be awarded soon after the invention or discovery of something cool, and the literature prize was for "idealistic" literature. The academies that awarded the prizes bent the rules in a direction more to their liking. Probably for the better, awarding discoveries just for the last year would lead to either excessive caution or embarrassments.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  Alfred Nobel had nothing to do with the Economics prize, which is a creation of the Swedish central bank that piggybacks on the prestige of the real Nobel prizes.
- johansch 12y ago
  Alfred Nobel left the peace price nomination, unlike the scientific ones, to the norwegians for some reason. The last couple of decades they have made a mockery of his wishes. Awarding the Nobel peace prize to Obama a few weeks into his presidency was just incredibly awkward and bizarre. People in Scandinavia (including Norway) are embarassed about the Nobel peace price committee's lust for hanging out with celebs, basically. Recently, a Nobel family member has been trying to stop the norwegian Peace prize comittee(appointed politically by the norwegian parliament) from having the right to award these prices. A bunch of lawsuits in various places, etc.
- afafsd 12y ago
  > A person who spent his life producing guns Explosives. >G. W. Bush run for it and came 2nd! You don't "run for it", and the information about who "came second" is never released, so I don't know where you heard this, but it's not true. Not that I disagree with your point about the Peace and to a lesser extent Literature prizes being horrendously politicised. If I were the Nobel committee then each year I'd give the Nobel Peace Prize to a random civilian somewhere in the world who minds his own damn business.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    True explosives (dynamite and all) was his thing... But on the moral side of things it's the same. For GW Bush I am reproducing what I ve read, but might very well be FUD, thanks for pointing that out. :-)
    - afafsd 12y ago
      >True explosives (dynamite and all) was his thing... But on the moral side of things it's the same. Without getting into the morality of gun technology (since the morality of a gun rather depends on whose hands you put it into), I'd say it's rather different because guns are used primarily as weapons whereas most of the world's explosives are used for peaceful purposes, in mining. Dyno Nobel is, to this day, one of the world's biggest suppliers of mining explosives.
- thewizardofmys 12y ago
  >Any person who has looked at any science at even small depth needs mathematics to express concepts. Mathematics are the lingua franca of the universe. You can't do Physics, Chemistry, Biology or even social sciences like Economics without a basic understanding of mathematics. I think he was more interested in applied mathematics, ie mathematics that is useful or used in real life scenario than math itself.
Dewie 12y ago
According to Wikipedia, the Abel Prize is considered by some as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
- magicalist 12y ago
  It's an analogy to explain to people the prestige and honor that comes along with the prize. There's no official ruling to be found on which one is considered to be more like the Nobel prize, and it really doesn't matter. The Fields Medal certainly has history and pedigree behind it (the Abel Prize was first awarded in 2003), but it also has some oddities, like the fact that it has an age limit, which means you won't get prizes for many mathematicians' seminal results, which often come after decades of work.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > It's an analogy to explain to people the prestige and honor that comes along with the prize. There's no official ruling to be found on which one is considered to be more like the Nobel prize, Um, you really don't think that I know that? "like the Nobel Prize" clearly means that it is the most, or one of the most, prestigious prices in its field. I continue to use the term in the colloquial sense that the article uses. What's so hard to understand about that? EDIT: that's a decent amount of downvotes for a thread with relatively few comments. I'm impressed, people!
    - magicalist 12y ago
      > What's so hard to understand about that? Understand what, exactly? Your original post didn't make it at all clear what you were posting about, so I assumed you were attempting to contest the honorific, though, again, for no clear reason. Apologies if I assumed incorrectly, but there wasn't a whole lot of context to go on.
      - Dewie 12y ago
        It's a fairly neutral statement - some mathematicians (I'm not even stating my opinion) apparently think that some other prize might have the status of "the Nobel Prize". I mean, that's the whole fucking point of the post - to make a note of the fact that this other prize might not be the most prestigious prize in some people's eyes, that some other prize might have the same level of prestige. Not to diminish to the Fields Medal, but to add a somewhat relevant factoid to the thread, considering that the article was so focused on the Nobel prize-like status of the Fields Medal. But of course since this is a somewhat typical Web forum, people have to assume the worst intent and try to snipe it, forcing me to belabor the original point which only needed one sentence to express.
kps 12y ago
> Many mathematicians will tell you that Nobel omitted mathematics from his > prizes to spite the Swedish mathematician Gosta Mittag-Leffler, a rival The one I heard, as a math undergrad, was that a mathematician took Nobel's wife to the limit in the horizontal plane.
- Jun8 12y ago
  This juicy gossip fails to die, please see, e.g. http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp for a nice debunking. For one thing Nobel never had a wife. Also, he emigrated from Sweden in 1865 when Mittag-Leffler was a student and rarely returned to visit.
Jun8 12y ago
Here's a good article from *Mathematical Intelligencer" on the topic (sorry, a bad scan): http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/mittag2.pdf http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/mittag2.pdf.

38 points by wallflower 12y ago

I always had mixed feelings about Alfred Nobel. A person who spent his life producing guns, then created the Nobel prizes, who often go to people that absolutely do not deserve it for political reasons ridiculing the prizes (e.g. Nobel for peace to Obama, G. W. Bush run for it and came 2nd!), but economics Nobels is also highly disputable. As for Math the article states: > Nobel omitted mathematics simply because it was not as important to him as other endeavors were. Any person who has looked at any science at even small depth needs mathematics to express concepts. Mathematics are the lingua franca of the universe. You can't do Physics, Chemistry, Biology or even social sciences like Economics without a basic understanding of mathematics. So IMHO Nobel (as I said I have mixed feelings for him), new that mathematics goes without saying and didn't create a Nobel for Mathematics. The fields medals is an excellent prize though, so IMHO there's no real gap.

chasing 12y ago
Maybe someone who knows more about this can confirm, but I've heard that Nobel left out mathematics because he felt it was too abstract or esoteric in comparison with these other sciences which (he felt) had more of a chance of directly improving the world. Maybe an analogy would be that while he promoted a prize for literature, he didn't promote a prize for typography or spelling. Not saying I agree with that idea, but this is what I've heard. Again: Someone who knows better, please correct my misunderstanding if I'm wrong.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  His intentions for the prizes were a bit different than what they developed to. He envisioned that the science prizes would have a more practical slant and be awarded soon after the invention or discovery of something cool, and the literature prize was for "idealistic" literature. The academies that awarded the prizes bent the rules in a direction more to their liking. Probably for the better, awarding discoveries just for the last year would lead to either excessive caution or embarrassments.
kryptiskt 12y ago
Alfred Nobel had nothing to do with the Economics prize, which is a creation of the Swedish central bank that piggybacks on the prestige of the real Nobel prizes.
johansch 12y ago
Alfred Nobel left the peace price nomination, unlike the scientific ones, to the norwegians for some reason. The last couple of decades they have made a mockery of his wishes. Awarding the Nobel peace prize to Obama a few weeks into his presidency was just incredibly awkward and bizarre. People in Scandinavia (including Norway) are embarassed about the Nobel peace price committee's lust for hanging out with celebs, basically. Recently, a Nobel family member has been trying to stop the norwegian Peace prize comittee(appointed politically by the norwegian parliament) from having the right to award these prices. A bunch of lawsuits in various places, etc.
afafsd 12y ago
> A person who spent his life producing guns Explosives. >G. W. Bush run for it and came 2nd! You don't "run for it", and the information about who "came second" is never released, so I don't know where you heard this, but it's not true. Not that I disagree with your point about the Peace and to a lesser extent Literature prizes being horrendously politicised. If I were the Nobel committee then each year I'd give the Nobel Peace Prize to a random civilian somewhere in the world who minds his own damn business.
- atmosx 12y ago
  True explosives (dynamite and all) was his thing... But on the moral side of things it's the same. For GW Bush I am reproducing what I ve read, but might very well be FUD, thanks for pointing that out. :-)
  - afafsd 12y ago
    >True explosives (dynamite and all) was his thing... But on the moral side of things it's the same. Without getting into the morality of gun technology (since the morality of a gun rather depends on whose hands you put it into), I'd say it's rather different because guns are used primarily as weapons whereas most of the world's explosives are used for peaceful purposes, in mining. Dyno Nobel is, to this day, one of the world's biggest suppliers of mining explosives.
thewizardofmys 12y ago
>Any person who has looked at any science at even small depth needs mathematics to express concepts. Mathematics are the lingua franca of the universe. You can't do Physics, Chemistry, Biology or even social sciences like Economics without a basic understanding of mathematics. I think he was more interested in applied mathematics, ie mathematics that is useful or used in real life scenario than math itself.

Dewie 12y ago

According to Wikipedia, the Abel Prize is considered by some as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

magicalist 12y ago
It's an analogy to explain to people the prestige and honor that comes along with the prize. There's no official ruling to be found on which one is considered to be more like the Nobel prize, and it really doesn't matter. The Fields Medal certainly has history and pedigree behind it (the Abel Prize was first awarded in 2003), but it also has some oddities, like the fact that it has an age limit, which means you won't get prizes for many mathematicians' seminal results, which often come after decades of work.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > It's an analogy to explain to people the prestige and honor that comes along with the prize. There's no official ruling to be found on which one is considered to be more like the Nobel prize, Um, you really don't think that I know that? "like the Nobel Prize" clearly means that it is the most, or one of the most, prestigious prices in its field. I continue to use the term in the colloquial sense that the article uses. What's so hard to understand about that? EDIT: that's a decent amount of downvotes for a thread with relatively few comments. I'm impressed, people!
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > What's so hard to understand about that? Understand what, exactly? Your original post didn't make it at all clear what you were posting about, so I assumed you were attempting to contest the honorific, though, again, for no clear reason. Apologies if I assumed incorrectly, but there wasn't a whole lot of context to go on.
    - Dewie 12y ago
      It's a fairly neutral statement - some mathematicians (I'm not even stating my opinion) apparently think that some other prize might have the status of "the Nobel Prize". I mean, that's the whole fucking point of the post - to make a note of the fact that this other prize might not be the most prestigious prize in some people's eyes, that some other prize might have the same level of prestige. Not to diminish to the Fields Medal, but to add a somewhat relevant factoid to the thread, considering that the article was so focused on the Nobel prize-like status of the Fields Medal. But of course since this is a somewhat typical Web forum, people have to assume the worst intent and try to snipe it, forcing me to belabor the original point which only needed one sentence to express.

kps 12y ago

> Many mathematicians will tell you that Nobel omitted mathematics from his > prizes to spite the Swedish mathematician Gosta Mittag-Leffler, a rival The one I heard, as a math undergrad, was that a mathematician took Nobel's wife to the limit in the horizontal plane.

Jun8 12y ago
This juicy gossip fails to die, please see, e.g. http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp for a nice debunking. For one thing Nobel never had a wife. Also, he emigrated from Sweden in 1865 when Mittag-Leffler was a student and rarely returned to visit.

Jun8 12y ago

Here's a good article from *Mathematical Intelligencer" on the topic (sorry, a bad scan): http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/mittag2.pdf http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/mittag2.pdf.