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Yes, he is a different class. Different from all those mathematicians working at Harvard, Princeton, etc. That adjunct job gave him sanity to solve the problem
by raincom 12y ago
Yes, he is a different class. Different from all those mathematicians working at Harvard, Princeton, etc.
That adjunct job gave him sanity to solve the problem. In the case of Grigori Perelman, these universities (Princeton, Harvard) did not want to give tenure job after his proving Soul Conjecture; this was during his postdoc at Courant NYU.
Of course, these math guys wanna offer a tenure track position, which woulda prevented him from proving Poincare conjecture. He went back to Russia, spent time in isolation for 8 years or so. Proved it. Once he published the paper on arXiv, the shithead professors at Princeton, Columbia want him back, so that they can be co-authors of his paper on poincare conjecture or these universities can appear on the paper a la affliation: you see, these elite universities love to show "Mr X from Princeton solved poincare conjecture".
Another chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman for the same conjecture.
It is a big mess out there. Zhang somehow used his adjunct/tutor job to spend time in number theory. Perelman used his postdoc fellowship savings to solve his problem. IN Zhang's case, he got the tenureship after his proof; Perelman gave up math.
- Ronsenshi 12y agoThank you for you comment. Very interesting information just like the article itself.
- jdonaldson 12y agoIt's pretty damning evidence if two of the biggest math breakthroughs needed to occur outside of our best universities. Arxiv is turning into a great tool to spread academic ideas, and is in some ways replacing the role of traditional journals. However, how do we replace the funding side of the equation? In both of these breakthrough cases, it seems the researchers found a loophole or used their personal savings.
- hybridthesis 12y agoI assume by "chinese professor at Harvard tried to steal the credit from Perelman", you mean the defamatory article written by The New Yorker regarding on Shing-Tung Yau. That accusatory article was written by an outsider with no regard to reality. For a correct account from within the mathematical community, see http://doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf http://doctoryau.com/hamiltonletter.pdf.
- littletimmy 12y agoWhile that may be true, there is no denying that Yau is a pretty divisive figure. He seems as interested in building his image in China and making the Chinese nation proud, than he is in doing real math. I can see why this attitude would rub some mathematicians the wrong way.
- raincom 12y agoThere is something unethical about Yau. Here is more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Destiny#Revision_of_the_Cao.E2.80.93Zhu_article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Destiny#Revision_of_th...
- eng_monkey 12y ago> Mr X from Princeton solved poincare conjecture Most likely Prof or Dr instead of Mr ;-)