4 ms·
Oh man, I actually cited some of his work in one of my papers. There was a particular result buried in one of his papers from 1968 that was not well-understood
by mccoy 12y ago
Oh man, I actually cited some of his work in one of my papers. There was a particular result buried in one of his papers from 1968 that was not well-understood by mathematicians for almost 20 years until it was resurrected in less-abstract language in 1986.
The particular result isn't his most famous, but it does underly a lot of modern research into approximate solutions of NP-hard problems. (See here: https://web.math.princeton.edu/~naor/homepage%20files/cutnorm.pdf https://web.math.princeton.edu/~naor/homepage%20files/cutnor...)
Sad to hear of such a brilliant person passing (even if he does reinforce a rather negative stereotype of mathematicians).
- gohrt 12y ago> even if he does reinforce a rather negative stereotype of mathematicians). is there some circmstance in which it wouldn't be sad to hear of that death of someone who "reinforce a rather negative stereotype of mathematicians"? That doesn't sound like a capital offense.
- throwaway10876 12y ago> is there some circmstance in which it wouldn't be sad to hear of that death of someone who "reinforce a rather negative stereotype of mathematicians"? There was definitely some rejoicing after a maths professor at my university died. The most common succinct explanation of this was that he "represented everything wrong with mathematics as a discipline", and a large part of why that is bad is that it reinforced negative stereotypes. Not saying the rejoicing was justified or that the death of a human being isn't sad, but many did rejoice, for better or worse including me. Not to say that Grothendieck's death was comparable. AFAIK he never sexually harassed anyone, or any of the other things said professor did.