[HN Gopher] Adventures of a Mathematician brings an unsung scien...
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Adventures of a Mathematician brings an unsung scientist back into
the light
Author : benbreen
Score : 48 points
Date : 2021-10-11 19:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I think most mathematicians are "unsung" heroes outside their
| fields. It is hard and obscure for most people to relate to.
| Influencers are more relatable to the masses.
|
| Those who ever did mathematics or physics etc do know them
| though.
|
| Anyone who knows about the Monte Carlo method knows Ulam:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method#History
|
| Most in society know about say Pascal for his
| philosophical/betting ideas than his mathematical contributions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
|
| Or Newton for having an apple fall on his head (gravity) than his
| (funnily enough disputed just like Ulam) contributions to
| mathematics:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculu...
|
| Or even modern mathematicians/technologists who helped create the
| theoretical foundational framework for polar codes and 5G
| technologies like Erdal Arikan (Erdal who???):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdal_Ar%C4%B1kan
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-5g-polar-codes-data-break...
|
| https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2018/7/Huawei-Dr-Erdal-Arikan...
| f00zz wrote:
| Must admit I only knew him for the spiral:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral
| power wrote:
| The book is well worth a read too. There are some great bits with
| John Von Neumann.
|
| On a similar note, Adventures of a Physicist by Luis Alvarez is
| also a great read. Among many other things, he and his son
| proposed the theory that the dinosaurs' extinction was caused by
| a meteor.
| jcora wrote:
| Of all mathematicians who would qualify as unsung, von Neumann
| is the last...
| graycat wrote:
| Ulam has a result in measure theory the French mathematician
| LeCam called _tightness_. The result is in
|
| Patrick Billingsley, _Convergence of Probability Measures_ , John
| Wiley and Sons, New York, 1968.
|
| The result was used in a course I took in measure theory based
| probability theory. Later I used the result in one paper to show
| that a goofy statistical hypothesis test was not _trivial_.
|
| The URL I've had of the picture of Ulam, von Neumann, and Feynman
| at Los Alamos during WWII moved, but another copy is at
|
| https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PRA6JxXrePw/Trm_LwKgxyI/AAAAAAAAC...
| Bjo wrote:
| unsung?
| Someone wrote:
| https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/unsun...
| :
|
| _unsung ADJECTIVE MAINLY LITERARY UK
|
| /^n's^NG/ DEFINITIONS
|
| not famous, praised, or admired, although deserving to be_
| cafard wrote:
| I suspect the parent knows the meaning, but considers it
| wrong as applied to Ulam.
| zazen wrote:
| I wish the parent had taken the time and effort to actually
| make his point, instead of leaving an easily misunderstood,
| single-word non-comment in the hope of some easy fake
| internet points. This is how forums degrade.
| herodotus wrote:
| I remember loving the book, especially the humour. For example:
| "There are three kinds of mathematicians, those who can count and
| those who can't." But the movie was (for me anyway), dour,
| preachy and depressing. A lot of hand wringing about the morality
| of working on the H-Bomb built into the dialog. No doubt some (or
| maybe many) of the scientists working on the Manhattan project
| were morally conflicted, but I doubt that they spent a lot of
| time while working discussing this as shown in the movie. I wish
| the movie had addressed this issue but had given more focus on
| Ulam's humour.
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