
The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery - prostoalex
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/pursuit-beauty
======
raincom
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.

~~~
hybridthesis
I 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
While 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.

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breckinloggins
Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I
read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago.

I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical
discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an
unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate.

Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about
age? If a 60 year old proves the Riemann Hypothesis, why is he or she
ineligible? This happened notably with Andrew Wiles. He (indirectly) proved
Fermat's Last Theorem and was rewarded a "special plaque" instead of the
Fields Medal for the crime of waiting until after his 40th trip around the sun
to work on it.

There's also the issue of economic pressure. We expect our young minds to
solve "real problems" and to want to make a lot of money doing it. Pure
mathematicians get to "hide" in academia when times are good and are often on
the street when they aren't so good. In the absence of a focus on supporting
the arts (including math) through patronage etc it is just _hard_ for young
people to get in the field. Older people have more time. Let them create
without lowered expectations.

For a deeply beautiful subject with a lot of very smart people, this whole age
thing is just scratch-your-head puzzling.

~~~
dxbydt
At the risk of downvotes, I will state a whole bunch of [Citation Needed] BS,
which is, nevertheless, empirically true & in Hardy's favor -

1\. Cerebral atrophy affects left brain disproportionately more than the right
2\. Math is predominantly a left-brain activity. 3\. Ergo, short-term memory &
dexterity with numbers generally degrades with age ( supposedly peaking at 25
& declining from then on).

Most math majors I've spoken to ( from prodigies to professors & people in
between ) attest to the fact that they were much sharper when they were quite
young. It isn't that they become dumber as they age, more like - they pick up
a different kind of math to compensate for some of the other math that
required them to exercise their symbolic manipulation skills at superior pace,
which they have now lost.

~~~
knowtheory
On the flip side, anyone who's in the social sciences can tell you that self-
reporting is a terrible gauge.

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test_plan
There's an interesting (and impassioned) critique of this article at

[http://www.angrymath.com/2015/02/yitang-zhang-article-in-
new...](http://www.angrymath.com/2015/02/yitang-zhang-article-in-new-
yorker.html)

~~~
blackbagboys
Could you perhaps explain what you found interesting? It's an angry screed
very revealing of its author's personality, but not particularly insightful
about the article.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I was thinking the same, the blogger appears to have a lot of things he's
upset about and is taking them out on the article.

------
guelo
This author immediately made me hate him starting with the first paragraph.
What was the point of that first paragraph? And I'm OK with adding some color
throughout to liven up a story but I felt like this author was just wasting my
time to try to show off that he's a writer. What an asshole.

~~~
sanoli
That first paragraph's tl;dr was basically: I'm bad with numbers, I'm an
artist, but someone told me about this math guy with an interesting story.

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wornoutman
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the author made an error. The author
wrote:

"A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a
deletable prime, such as 1987".

However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the
statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime
is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.

~~~
dragonwriter
> However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the
> statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime
> is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.

A deletable prime doesn't require that the deletion order start from the last
digit; the deletion order for 1987 is:

1987 -> 197 -> either 19 or 17

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mrwizrd
For anyone behind the paywall, here's a pastebin link. The article was a bit
long to break into comments.

[http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E](http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E)

~~~
mhlakhani
Just googling for the article's title leads to a link that works. They don't
paywall people coming from Google

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SixSigma
OT the cartoons interspersed in the OP are absolutely awful. Nice work if you
can get it!

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eng_monkey
The author does not even understand the difference between arithmetic and
mathematics.

~~~
aint
What's the difference?

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maxxxcohen
How can it be solved , if it's still considered a mystery ?

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aurizon
get rid of new yorker = paywall

~~~
ctchocula
I too have read my last complimentary article of the month, and am stuck
behind the paywall. Could someone paste the article here?

~~~
mrwizrd
Here's a pastebin link, the article was a bit long to break into comments. I
hope that's okay.

[http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E](http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E)

~~~
ctchocula
Thanks a bunch!

