[HN Gopher] Majority of mathematicians hail from just 24 scienti...
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Majority of mathematicians hail from just 24 scientific 'families'
(2016)
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-04-28 08:02 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| To be clear, this refers to teacher-pupil relationships, not
| actual familial heritage.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, this doesn't surprise me at all, and I think you'd be
| likely to see similar relationships in any "niche" pursuits
| that take tons of expertise, e.g. classical musicians, ballet
| dancers, archeologists, successful startup companies, etc. etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| So basically it's an Erdos number post.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Isn't that about co-authoring rather than teacher-pupil
| relationships?
| sgillen wrote:
| Yes but the two are very related, a phd student will almost
| always publish papers with their advisor.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly - the smallest ones often go through
| teacher/pupil, and since almost all PhD mathematicians
| studied under a PhD it makes for a relatively small
| group.
| rob_c wrote:
| But we need an alex jones style headline to get in on the click
| bait...
|
| If this wasn't nature.com I would give it a free pass and shrug
| that "huh, everyone else is doing it", but really....
|
| 'C'MON!!!
| smegsicle wrote:
| and leading with "Evolution of mathematics traced using
| unusually comprehensive genealogy database" ?
|
| anyway, the more interesting aspect seems to be the drop-off
| after the top five, they don't even bother naming the others-
| see the first graph on the page
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| I think they name them all in Figure 10 in the actual paper
| [1]. But it doesn't seem to contain a rank ordering of the
| mathematicians that is easy to recover.
|
| Also, it appears there is data duplication with the first
| four names appearing twice in the list (first four and last
| four).
|
| [1] https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.114
| 0/epj...
| rob_c wrote:
| I was hoping not to have to dig through source material but
| i agree i do wonder how many Ramanujan style (isolated)
| mathematicians are in the field.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| I'm pretty critical of click-bait headlines in what are
| supposed to be more academic journals, but I don't get the
| frustration with this one. 'Families' is written in
| quotations, which tells me right from the jump that the
| author is probably not speaking about literal family units,
| and the use of "family" or "family tree" nomenclature in
| discussing matters of genesis and inheritance is pretty
| commonplace.
| adventured wrote:
| The majority of nobel laureates hail from just two countries.
| sva_ wrote:
| _United States -- 400
|
| United Kingdom -- 138
|
| Germany -- 111
|
| France -- 71
|
| Sweden -- 32 (tie)
|
| Russia -- 32 (tie)
|
| Japan -- 29
|
| Canada -- 28
|
| Switzerland -- 27
|
| Austria -- 22 (tie)
|
| Netherlands -- 22 (tie)_
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nobel-pri...
|
| Doesn't seem so
| travem wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > Nobel Prizes (including the SRPESMAN) have been awarded 609
| times to a total of 943 people and 25 organizations
|
| Using the number of 943 people, a majority of Nobel Laureates
| (meaning more than 50%) would be more than 472 people. US +
| UK is 538 people which puts them above that threshold of
| being a majority.
| sva_ wrote:
| I guess if you put it that way, the statement might be
| correct. But the disparity between US and UK being so big,
| I feel like the argument is a bit weaker. Using the average
| on such a small set doesn't seem to be so useful if there
| is such an outlier.
|
| There are some interesting lists here: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...
|
| I guess you could also look at laureates by country born,
| considering many people went to the US in WW2. But I
| imagine it'd just devolve into senseless nationalism.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I do agree with sibling post on the majority of prizes
| awarded to citizens of two countries.
|
| I was wondering how many of them (Einstein being an obvious
| example) were US citizens when the got the prize but were
| born elsewhere?
|
| "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled scientific
| geniuses"
| solveit wrote:
| Certainly this is the only reason Germany is behind the UK.
| They were somehow the centre of the scientific world
| despite their less-than-ideal political conditions and then
| they ran their own talent out of their country. (And then
| they lost the war and the superpowers came and took the
| remaining talent, which was _still_ formidable)
| seoaeu wrote:
| > ran their own talent out of their country
|
| Or outright murdered them
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-04-30 23:01 UTC)