
Hilda Geiringer Reshaped Mathematics - sonabinu
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191031-hilda-geiringer-mathematician-who-fled-the-nazis
======
jordigh
While I don't doubt that Geiringer did a lot of important work, I'm a little
frustrated with how difficult it is to read about that work itself.

Look at a Wikipedia article about a relatively obscure mathematician, say,
Robert Remak:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Remak_(mathematician)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Remak_\(mathematician\))

Right away it says what fields he worked in and mentions some of his results.
The rest of the article goes into a bit more depth about his work and then
finishes off with a paragraph about the tragedy in his life.

Compare now with Hilda Geiringer's article:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Geiringer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Geiringer)

Her work is described in very vague strokes, "two variable Fourier series" and
then mentions statistics, probability, and plasticity... so, what did she do
exactly? These are very broad fields! The article does mention the Geiringer
equations, but there's no corresponding Wikipedia article about them.

The majority of Geiringer's article is instead taken up by the fact that she
was a Jewish woman with relatively very little attention given to her
mathematics.

To be clear, I'm not saying that this is a Wikipedia-exclusive phenomenon. The
BBC article is also rather "soft", as a popular article must be out of
necessity, but for minorities, sometimes they (we?) must deal being talked
about in nothing but soft articles. The geek feminism wiki calls this the
unicorn law:

[https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Unicorn_Law](https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Unicorn_Law)

~~~
growlist
For some reason some people are incredibly hostile to this suggestion, but I
think the BBC has dumbed down pretty drastically over the years - and this can
be pretty easily verified by comparing their output from decades past with
today's. Older popular science TV programmes sometimes even had - shock
horror! - in depth discussion of _actual mathematical equations_. By contrast,
I watched a Brian Cox space series recently in which I recall a single mention
of maths, and that was a few animated formulae floating around a beautifully
rendered planetary scene as graphics without real explanation, whilst some
dreamy ambient synth music played in the background. There's a massive
difference in style, content, sophistication of ideas presented, and density
of information. The new stuff poses as educational, but delivers very little
proper detail.

Apart from that, I think that surely it would have served this woman's memory
far better to tell us the details of what she achieved, and how her work has
been built on, rather than making her victimhood the main thrust. I'll bet
she'd have preferred to be remembered as a mathematician rather than a victim.

~~~
bonoboTP
(Public) TV used to be much more intellectual in several countries (including
my own, Hungary). Partially because there weren't so many alternatives to
compete with. The managers could afford to not care about dumbing it down and
people watched it in lieu of more gratifying things.

Clickbait and instant gratification is now the norm and if you don't keep up,
you just won't be able to attract enough viewers. Now theoretically publicly
funded channels and publications could just ignore viewership/readership
numbers, but their management style has also become much more commercial.

"Who wants to be a millionaire" used to be incredibly popular in many
countries (it was huge in Hungary). In that show sometimes half a minute is
just a person thinking in silence, staring at some question about medieval
history or about an opera. How many people would watch this nowadays?

~~~
growlist
Thing is there were plenty of programmes on TV when I was younger that would
have had a tiny viewership even back then, and were shown as they fulfilled
the required 'boring but worthy' percentage of the BBC's output - these have
almost all disappeared to be replaced by facsimiles that pretend to be the
same thing but are nothing close.

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pksdjfikkkkdsff
She may be cool, but she didn't "reshape Mathematics". Wish such articles
would come without so much hyperbole.

And as for missed geniuses, there are many missed male geniuses, too, many
famously so (even Einstein didn't get a position as a professor at first).
They suggest only women are overlooked, which is untrue.

There are also examples of female mathematicians even further back being
fostered by famous mathematicians.

~~~
klyrs
> She may be cool, but she didn't "reshape Mathematics".

You missed the pun.

~~~
pksdjfikkkkdsff
No I get it, her formula is about ideal shapes (of bridges). It is still
misleading. They could have written "who reshaped bridges".

I suppose Grothendieck reshaped Mathematics - he invented a new way of looking
at things, that made it possible to prove a host of new things.

In a sense perhaps every mathematical result reshapes mathematics. But they
used it here to inflate her importance, to make it seem outrageous that she
was supposedly forgotten. As if many Mathematicians are being remembered in
general.

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wolfi1
if we are talking about female mathematicians don't forget Emmy Noether:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether)

~~~
Koshkin
We are talking about a migrant Jewish female mathematician who was
discriminated against trying to start a career in the USA in mid-1940s.

~~~
oefrha
Who did not reshape mathematics, unlike Emmy Noether.

~~~
fmajid
Yes. When I read the headline, I thought it was going to be about Noether.
Even then, I'd argue she reshaped physics, not mathematics itself, unlike,
say, Galois or Gödel.

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sp332
This title isn't very good. At least name the person.

~~~
concordDance
"Reshaped Mathematics" is quite an exageration.

~~~
77pt77
I think it's a pun with plasticity, a field where she did work in.

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sonabinu
BBC has a way of doing this with titles. They start with a very broad title
and then narrow it as the story ages.

------
LanceH
Summary: Woman contributes to mathematics; can't find appropriate academic
position because she isn't a man.

As far as the article goes there is a bit about her contribution which is over
inflated to, "reshaped maths". This is used as a jumping off point to talk
about how she can't find the same work her male counterparts would, skills
being equal. Finding out that professors were mostly men in the early to mid
20th century is hardly noteworthy but the article spends some time on it.
Finally a bit of commentary by the author about missed opportunities because
people other than white men have ideas, too.

The last seems to be the point, but it reads as an attempt to find misery and
highlight it, rather than perhaps remembering the woman and her contribution.
The contribution the author is really interested in is the failure and the
opportunity it presents to make a trite statement about equality of
opportunity. All with a click bait title.

~~~
whatshisface
If the BBC is trying to build a case that female mathematicians were treated
poorly 70 years ago compared to their male counterparts, they would somehow
need to show that there wasn't a similar supply of men who made an obscure but
significant contribution only to get coldly treated by the establishment
(somehow I think there's no shortage). We must be careful to not fall prey to
example-ism, building cases out of salient examples instead of evenly sampled
trends.

~~~
jordigh
Let's not fall into denialism here. There's absolutely no doubt that being a
Jewish woman mathematician in the 1930s was doubly difficult than being a male
Jewish mathematician -- double the discrimination. Calling Geiringer's
situation "example-ism" is up there with doubting the sky is blue because I
said I saw blue skies in Italy one time.

~~~
whatshisface
I have never seen any evidence that women were discriminated against in 1930s
mathematics other than specific stories about women being treated coldly by
the establishment. I have certainly never seen anyone compare their cold
treatment to the ambient coldness.

Look at it this way. If I told you every time a coin came up heads, how many
reports would it take for you to conclude that it was biased? The right answer
is "the conclusion may never be reached," because I'm not allowing you to
tally up the number of times it came up tails. Likewise, despite the huge
number of stories about women being denied appointments despite having made
significant contributions, no conclusion can be drawn until there is some
indication that the effect is unique to women.

Another important point is that even if the 1930s were awful and sexist, there
may have been islands of relatively fair people. So in the interest of
remembing them as they deserve, it is best to check each social group
individually for evidence of their bad behavior, so that you don't end up
remembering the one admissions committee that wasn't sexist as just another
bias enforcement team.

~~~
elliekelly
> I have never seen any evidence that women were discriminated against in
> 1930s mathematics other than specific stories about women being treated
> coldly by the establishment.

So you've seen no evidence of discrimination... other than specific stories of
discrimination? What do you think discrimination in academia looks like? A
giant sign on the front door of the university that says "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"?

Geiringer was the first woman professor of Mathematics in Germany but she
probably wasn't the first woman in Germany who was _qualified_ to hold that
position.

~~~
whatshisface
There is no number of specific stories that should convince anyone, unless
there is also some indication that they are being evenly sampled! You would
have to compare all of the stories of men who were denied appointments to make
a conclusion. To get a probability from a count, you have to divide by
something.

~~~
Voloskaya
I mean, isn't the fact that there were virtually no women in academia back in
the time a convincing enough proof in itself that there was, indeed,
discrimination?

~~~
whatshisface
Discrimination on the part of gatekeepers isn't the only thing that can keep
minorities out. A culture that tells them not to try doing it because it isn't
their assigned role, a fear of being the only one of their group among a
majority of another group, and _earlier_ discrimination that prevents them
from getting qualifications but isn't the fault of the gatekeeper could all be
responsible. Given the information I know and what has been brought up in this
discussion, University mathematicians could have been perfectly willing to
hire women.

~~~
Voloskaya
This is just the good old pipeline fallacy all over again.

~~~
Udik
The fact you like to call it fallacy doesn't make it one.

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EliRivers
Classic HN baiting; I predict the comments will be over 50% meta-commentary
about the title's inaccuracy and possibly something about the principle of
highlighting female mathematicians, a sizeable chunk on suggestions for female
mathematicians with a larger impact, and very little about Geiringer, her
mathematics and her legacy...

~~~
fzeroracer
It's incredibly unfortunate that you're correct, but I'm also not surprised.

Topics like these on HN inevitability devolve into complaints about the media
or attempting to divert discussion into something entirely different (like
missed male geniuses). Nevermind the pun people missed in the article title as
they immediately jumped to attempt to discredit the entire thing.

