
A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces - Varcht
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/
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onetimeusename
A minor point, the article says that Hypatia of Alexandria was killed by
Christian Zealots which is true except it was for non-religious reasons but
rather political and it was in a city and time where public political
executions were common. Maybe some women have had difficulty with their math,
not in my experience but maybe elsewhere, but not Hypatia, she was not killed
for her mathematics.[1]

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia#Death)

~~~
nmrm2
After reading the wikipedia article, I'm not convinced that her scholarly life
had nothing to do with her murder. In fact, it seems to have played a pretty
crucial role.

e.g. we can ask "why Hypatia?" given that there were plenty of worthy targets
of public outrage, and Hypatia probably wasn't even the post powerful.

~~~
onetimeusename
Well, the wikipedia article suggested that it was because they believed she
was responsible for Orestes's "unwillingness to reconcile with Cyril". That
suggests they were provoked by the content of whatever she was saying to
Orestes so if it had been for anything mathematical or philosophical, it was
not recorded that way but I don't think there is a lot of evidence to go that
route.

Here is a blog post by a historian about a movie that dealt with the subject,
if you have the patience to read through it all.
[http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/05/agora-and-
hypatia...](http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/05/agora-and-hypatia-
hollywood-strikes.html)

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kaitai
The big speculation was whether it would be Mirzakhani or Sophie Morel, in
number theory (Langlands program etc). So now we can start betting on the next
round of Fields medals: will Morel be next?

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wglb
Another thread with very remarkable discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169367)

~~~
Mz
Also also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170640)

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codyb
Correlation does not equal causation but the first thing that stands out to me
among these two articles today about Mathematicians who've won Field Medals is
their tenacious appetites for literature of all sorts as children.

I think it's incredibly important to note the diversity of subjects consumed
and the importance of literature in these children's upbringing.

~~~
agopinath
I think Stanford's undergrad college admission's essay prompt asking about
"intellectual vitality" says it best.

I'd generalize your point to these mathematicians having such intellectual
vitality from an early age and demonstrating it or pursuing it in some way or
another. This is distinct from developing this vitality later in their
childhood.

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ph0rque
My girls enjoyed my reading this article to them :)

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alphydan
for those interested to see the kind of language that is used to develop her
ideas ... here's a taste

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/0811.2362.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/0811.2362.pdf),
Counting closed geodesics in Moduli space (PDF)

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triplesec
A fine explanation of her work and trajectory for the intelligent
nonspecialist:
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-
explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/)

~~~
dang
Thanks. Since the posted URL ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/08/13...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/08/13/a-woman-wins-nobel-prize-of-math-for-the-first-time/)) is
news that was prominent on HN yesterday, we've changed the url to this much
more substantive article, which wasn't.

~~~
Varcht
This is a much better link. I posted the original with the the thought that
there was some irony that all of the top news articles on the subject (as
rated by google news) were completely without substance as to Maryam's
accomplishments and only were pointing out that she was a women that does some
stuff with curved surfaces. I thought the conversation might follow my
observations.

I have to say that I admire Maryam very much. I love her tenacity and abstract
approach.

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jankeromnes
Why not call it the Fields Medal?

~~~
triplesec
This is a quirk of HN posting policy: to use the original article title.

~~~
dang
Except when it's misleading or linkbait. That one was arguably misleading,
though with the quotes not so much.

Edit: the title was "A woman wins ‘Nobel Prize of math’ for the first time".
We changed the article to the more substantive simonsfoundation.org piece
about Mirzakhani.

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bernardom
Why does the WaPo use different colored fonts for different sentences within
certain paragraphs?

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tempodox
It's about time. There seems to be hard evidence that girls are better at math
than boys, on average. Hence, all other things being equal, more than half of
world-class mathematicians should be female. I wonder how that applies to
programming.

~~~
treerock
The winners are on the edge of the bell curve. Averages are meaningless.

~~~
tempodox
That's an interesting observation and I do see your point.

