Mathematicians of the 20th Century

Published by peter on 2013-03-13 in Concats, Mathematics and Matherati. 0 Comments

With so many blogs being written by members of the literati, it’s not surprising that a widespread meme involves compiling lists of writers and books.  I’ve even succumbed to it myself.   Lists of mathematicians are not as common, so I thought I’d present a list of the 20th century greats.    Some of these are famous for a small number of contributions, or for work which is only narrow, while others have had impacts across many parts of mathematics.
Each major area of mathematics represented here (eg, category theory, computer science) could equally do with its own list, which perhaps I’ll manage in due course.  I’ve included David Hilbert, Felix Hausdorff and Bertrand Russell because their most influential works were published in the 20th century.  Although Hilbert reached adulthood in the 19th century, his address to the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris greatly influenced the research agenda of mathematicians for much of the 20th century, and his 1899 axiomatization of geometry (following the lead of Mario Pieri) influenced the century’s main style of doing mathematics.   For most of the 20th century, mathematics was much more abstract and more general than it had been in the previous two centuries.    This abstract style perhaps reached its zenith in the work of Bourbaki, Grothendieck, Eilenberg and Mac Lane, while the mathematics of Thurston, for example, was a throwback to the particularist, even perhaps anti-abstract, style of 19th century mathematics.  And Perelman’s major contributions have been in this century, of course.

  • David Hilbert (1862-1943)
  • Felix Hausdorff (1868-1942)
  • Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
  • Henri Lebesgue (1875-1941)
  • Godfrey Hardy (1877-1947)
  • LEJ (“Bertus”) Brouwer (1881-1966)
  • Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)
  • Alonzo Church (1903-1995)
  • Andrei Kolmogorov (1903-1987)
  • John von Neumann (1903-1957)
  • Henri Cartan (1904-2008)
  • Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)
  • Saunders Mac Lane (1909-2005)
  • Leonid Kantorovich (1912-1986)
  • Alan Turing (1912-1954)
  • Samuel Eilenberg (1913-1998)
  • René Thom (1923-2002)
  • John Forbes Nash (1928-2015)
  • Alexander Grothendieck (1928-2014)
  • Michael Atiyah (1929- )
  • Steven Smale (1930- )
  • Paul Cohen (1934-2007)
  • Nicolas Bourbaki (1935- )
  • Sergei Novikov (1938- )
  • Stephen Cook (1939- )
  • William Thurston (1946-2012)
  • Edward Witten (1951- )
  • Andrew Wiles (1953- )
  • Richard Borcherds (1959- )
  • Grigori Perelman (1966- )
  • Vladimir Voevodsky (1966- )
  • Edward Frenkel (1968- )

And here’s my list of great mathematical ideas.

Let me count the ways

Published by peter on 2013-03-12 in Decision theory. 0 Comments

A cartoon I once saw had a manager asking his subordinate to list all the action-options available for some decision, then to list the pros and cons of each action-option and then to count them, pros and cons combined, and to choose the option with the highest combined total.  Thus, if one option A had 2 pros and 1 con, and another option B had 1 pro and 5 cons, the latter would be selected.   You might call this the Pointy-Haired Boss model of decision-making.
It is interesting to ask exactly why is this NOT a sensible way of deciding what to do in some situation.   Most of us would say that firstly, this method ignores the direction of the arguments for and against doing something – it flattens out the positive and negative nature of (respectively) the pros and the cons.   Even inserting positive and negative signs to the numbers of supporting arguments would be better:  Thus, option A would have +2 and -1, giving a net value of +1, while option B would have +1 and -5, giving a net value of -4; choosing option A over B on this basis would feel better, since we taking into account the direction of support or attack.
But even this additive approach ignores the strength of the support of each pro argument, and the strength of the attack of each con argument.    In other words, even the additive approach still flattens something – in this case, the importance of each pro or con.    We might then consider inserting some measure of value or importance to the arguments.  If they involve any uncertainty, then we might also add some measure of that in some form or other, whether quantitative (eg, probabilities) or qualitative (eg, linguistic labels).
But let us stay with the pointy-haired boss for a moment.   We have 3 arguments (2 pro, 1 con) under A, and 6 arguments (1 pro, 5 con) under B.   Why do we have more arguments for some options than for others?  It could be because we have thought about some options more than we have others, or because, through our own direct experience or observation of the experiences of others, we know more about the likely upsides and downsides of some options.   The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, for example, because we’ve not yet been over that side of the fence to see the mud there.   On our side, we can clearly see all the downsides as well as the ups.  Human decision biases may also lead us to emphasize the negative sides of more familiar situations, while emphasizing the positives of less familiar situations.
A model of decision-making I have proposed before – retroflexive decision-making – understands that real managers in real organizations making important decisions don’t generally have only the one pass at deciding the possible decision-options and articulating the pros and cons of each.  Rather, managers work iteratively and collectively, sharing their knowledge and experiences, drawing on wide sources, and usually seeking to build a consensus view.   In addition, they almost never work in a vacuum – rather, they work within a context of legacy policies and systems, with particular corporate strengths, experiences, skills, expertise, technologies, business partners, trading relationships, regulatory environments, and even personalities, and within overall intended future corporate directions.   All this context means that some decision-options will already be favoured and others disfavoured.   That much is human – and corporate – nature.   Consequently, decision-makers will naturally seek to strengthen the pros and the positive consequences of some options (including, but usually not only, the favoured ones), while weakening or mitigating their cons and negative consequences of those options.
None of this is wrong – in fact, it is good management.   Every decision-option in any even moderately complex domain will have both pros and cons.  Making work whichever option is selected will be a matter of finding ways to eliminate or mitigate the negative consequences, while at the same time seeking to strengthen the positive consequences.   Those options where we know more about the pros and cons are also likely to be the options where we have the greatest leverage from experience, knowledge, and expertise to accentuate the pros and to mitigate the cons.    To that extent, the Pointy-Haired Boss model is not necessarily as stupid as it may seem.

Composers concat

Published by peter on 2013-03-05 in Concats and Music. 0 Comments

While making lists of artists whose work speaks to me, here’s my list of classical composers likewise.  Of course, I don’t necessarily like everything these composers wrote.

  • Johann Adam Reincken (1643-1722)
  • Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
  • Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758)
  • Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
  • Michael Haydn (1737-1806)
  • Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813)
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
  • Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842)
  • Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
  • Johann Hummel (1778-1837)
  • Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
  • Louise Farrenc (1804-1875)
  • Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
  • Juan Chrisostomo Arriaga (1806-1826)
  • Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
  • Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
  • William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875)
  • Neils Gade (1817-1890)
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
  • Antoni Stolpe (1851-1872)
  • Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
  • Alfred Hill (1869-1960)
  • Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
  • Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
  • Colin McPhee (1900-1964)
  • Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978)
  • Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
  • John Cage (1912-1992)
  • Jim Penberthy (1917-1999)
  • Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
  • Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006)
  • Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
  • Peter Sculthorpe  (1929-2014)
  • Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
  • Richard Meale (1932-2009)
  • Terry Riley (1935- )
  • Steve Reich (1936- )
  • Philip Glass (1937- )
  • Louis Andriessen (1939- )
  • Michael Nyman (1944- )
  • Barry Conyngham (1944- )
  • John Adams (1947- )
  • Akira Nishimura (1953- )
  • Cecilie Ore (1954- )
  • Pascal Dusapin (1955- )
  • Andrew McGuiness
  • Christophe Bertrand (1981-2010).

The alert reader will notice the absence of Richard Wagner.   This is deliberate.

The Yogyakartan Candidate

Published by peter on 2013-03-04 in Culture, History, Obama speeches, Politics and Post-Industrial Nomads. 0 Comments

An explanation of Bam’s aloof style and strategic cunning in terms of the idioms of traditional Javanese kingship, by Edward Fox in Aeon Magazine, here.   Fox could also have mentioned the first-term Cabinet of Rivals as another example of this idiom, absorbing one’s enemies.
An excerpt:

The Javanese have a word for this kind of bearing. They call it halus. The nearest literal equivalent in English might be ‘chivalrous’, which means not just finely mannered, but implies a complete code of noble behaviour and conduct. The American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who wrote some of the most important studies of Javanese culture in English, defined halus in The Religion of Java (1976) as:
“Formality of bearing, restraint of expression, and bodily self-discipline … spontaneity or naturalness of gesture or speech is fitting only for those ‘not yet Javanese’ — ie, the mad, the simple-minded, and children.”
Even now, four decades after leaving Java, Obama exemplifies halus behaviour par excellence.
Halus is also the key characteristic of Javanese kingship, a tradition still followed by rulers of the modern state of Indonesia. During my period of study in Indonesia, I discovered that halus is the fundamental outward sign or proof of a ruler’s legitimacy. The tradition is described in ancient Javanese literature and in studies by modern anthropologists. The spirit of the halus ruler must burn with a constant flame, that is without (any outward) turbulence. In his classic essay, ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’ (1990), the Indonesian scholar Benedict Anderson describes the ruler’s halus as:
“The quality of not being disturbed, spotted, uneven, or discoloured. Smoothness of spirit means self-control, smoothness of appearance means beauty and elegance, smoothness of behaviour means politeness and sensitivity. Conversely, the antithetical quality of being kasar means lack of control, irregularity, imbalance, disharmony, ugliness, coarseness, and impurity.”
One can see the clear distinction between Obama’s ostensibly aloof style of political negotiation in contrast to the aggressive, backslapping, physically overbearing political style of a president such as Lyndon Johnson.
Traditionally, the Javanese ruler triumphs over his adversary without even appearing to exert himself. His adversary must have been defeated already, as a consequence of the ruler’s total command over natural and human forces. This is a common theme in traditional Javanese drama, where the halus hero effortlessly triumphs over his kasar (literally, unrefined or uncivilised) enemy. ‘In the traditional battle scenes,’ Anderson notes:
“The contrast between the two becomes strikingly apparent in the slow, smooth, impassive and elegant movements of the satria [hero], who scarcely stirs from his place, and the acrobatic leaps, somersaults, shrieks, taunts, lunges, and rapid sallies of his demonic opponent. The clash is especially well-symbolised at the moment when the satria [hero] stands perfectly still, eyes downcast, apparently defenceless, while his demonic adversary repeatedly strikes at him with dagger, club, or sword — but to no avail. The concentrated power of the satria [hero] makes him invulnerable.”
Even to seem to exert himself is vulgar, yet he wins. This style of confrontation echoes that first famous live TV debate in the election of 2012 between Obama and Romney, in which Obama seemed passive, with eyes downcast, apparently defenceless (some alleged ‘broken’) in the face of his enemy, only to triumph in later debates and in the election itself.
Like a Javanese king, Obama has never taken on a political fight that he has not, arguably, already won
But such a disposition is not just external posturing. Halus in a Javanese ruler is the outward sign of a visible inner harmony which gathers and concentrates power in him personally. In the West, we might call this charisma. Crucially, in the Javanese idea of kingship, the ruler does not conquer opposing political forces, but absorbs them all under himself. In the words of Anderson again, the Javanese ruler has ‘the ability to contain opposites and to absorb his adversaries’. The goal is a unity of power that spreads throughout the kingdom. To allow a multiplicity of contending forces in the kingdom is a sign of weakness. Power is achieved through spiritual discipline — yoga-like and ascetic practices. The ruler seeks nothing for himself; if he acquires wealth, it is a by-product of power. To actively seek wealth is a spiritual weakness, as is selfishness or any other personal motive other than the good of the kingdom.”

 

Multi-parliamentarians

Published by peter on 2013-03-04 in History and Politics. 0 Comments

The death of Joan Child reminded me of a fellow MP of hers who had served in both the British House of Commons and the Australian House of Representatives.   I thus thought it interesting to list people who had been elected to two or more parliaments or assemblies (excluding those belonging to both national and regional assemblies from federations,  such as the European Parliament, Australia, etc), and those elected to parliaments of successor states (such as Rhodesia and Zimbabwe).

  • Adolf Berman (1906-1978), Polish Sejm (Polish Workers Party, c. 1945-1950) and the Israeli Knesset (Mapam – United Workers Party and later Maki – Communist Party of Israel, 1951-1955).
  • Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne (1883-1967), Australian House of Representatives (Nationalist Party and United Australia Party, 1918-1933) and British House of Lords (Life Peerage, 1947-1967).  Bruce was the first Australian member of the House of Lords.
  • Hugh Childers (1827-1896), appointed member of the Legislative Council of the colony of Victoria (1852-1856) and elected member of the inaugural Victorian Legislative Assembly (November 1856-February 1857), then elected member of the British House of Commons (1860-1892, peripatetically). In Britain, Childers held various senior ministerial positions in administrations of William Gladstone, including Secretary of State for War, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. Childers was the great-grandson of Sir Sampson Gideon, later Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley (1744-1824), the first British MP of Jewish descent (an MP from 1770-1802).
  • Mathias Corman (born in Belgium, 1970), Senator for Western Australia (2007-2020) and Commonwealth Minister for Finance (2013-2020), who was briefly a member of the municipal council of German-speaking Raeran, Leige, Belgium, before migrating to Australia in 1994.
  • Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), Member of the UK House of Commons for the Irish seat of New Ross (1852-1855) and Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Nation of Victoria (1856-1880).  Duffy, a Roman Catholic, was Premier of Victoria (1871-1872) and Speaker of the House of Assembly (1877-1880).  One of his sons, Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (1852-1936) became Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (1931-1935), while another son, George Gavan Duffy (1882-1951) became Minister of Foreign Affairs of Eire (1922) and President of the High Court of Eire (1946-1951).
  • Albert Hawke (1900-1986), member of the South Australian House of Assembly (1924-1927) and of the Western Australian House of Assembly (1933-1968). Premier of Western Australia (1953-1959). Uncle of Australian Prime Minister Robert James Lee Hawke (1983-1991).
  • Godfrey Huggins, 1st Viscount Malvern (1883-1971), elected member of the House of Assembly of Southern Rhodesia 1924-1953, Prime Minister 1933-1953, elected member of the Federal Parliament and Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953-1956, appointed member of the British House of Lords 1955-1971. As he remained in Rhodesia following his retirement in 1956, it is not clear if Malvern ever sat in the Lords.
  • Marthinus Pretorius (1819-1901), President of the South African Republic (aka the Transvaal, 1857-September 1860, 1864-1871, 1880-1883) and for a period in 1860 simultaneously President of the Orange Free State (January 1860-1863).
  • Sir George Reid (1845-1918), twelfth Premier of New South Wales (1894-1899) and fourth Prime Minister of Australia (1904-1905), was a member of the Australian Commonwealth House of Representatives (1901-1909) and a member of the British House of Commons (1916-1918).
  • Sir Robert Richard Torrens (1814-1884), third Premier of South Australia (1857), was a member of the South Australian House of Assembly from 1851-1863 (initially appointed, then elected) and an elected member of the British House of Commons for Cambridge from 1868-1874. He created the land registration system known as Torrens Title.
  • William Yates (1921-2010), British House of Commons (Conservative and Unionist Party, 1955-1966) and the Australian House of Representatives (Liberal Party, 1975-1980).

Others who almost make this list are:

  • Daniel Cohn-Bendit (1945- ), Member of the European Parliament (1994-2014).  From 1994-1999 and again from 2004-2009, Cohn-Bendit was elected an MEP from Germany, while from 1999-2004 and again from 2009-2014, he was elected an MEP from France.  He could readily have been elected to both the French and the German national parliaments. With a German father and a French mother, he qualified for citizenship from both countries, but opted as an adult for German citizenship, apparently to avoid French military service. De Gaulle then had him deported.
  • Andrew Clarke (1824-1902), Appointed member of the Legislative Council of Victoria (1853-1856), elected Member of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria (1856-1858), contested the constituency of Chatham in the British House of Commons in 1886 and 1892, both times unsuccessfully.  In between times, Clarke was Governor of Singapore and Governor of the Straits Settlements, 1873-1875.
  • Graça Machel, First Lady of two countries, Mozambique (as wife of Samora Machel) and South Africa (as wife of Nelson Mandela).
  • Thomas Paine (1737-1809), who was secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of (but not a delegate to) the Second Continental Congress (of the United States) and was a member of the French National Convention (1792-1793).
  • Ian Paisley (1926-2014), who was an elected member variously of the British House of Commons, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the European Parliament, and could probably also have been elected, had he so wished, to the Scottish Parliament.
  • Sir Garfield Todd (1908-2002), elected member of the House of Assembly of Southern Rhodesia (1948-1958, including Prime Minister, 1953-1958), appointed a Senator in the Senate of Zimbabwe (1980-1985).  Todd was born in New Zealand, whose Government arranged for his knighthood.  In an act of spite of the Mugabe regime, his Zimbabwean citizenship was revoked in 2002. His PA at the time of his premiership, Susan Woodhouse, wrote an authorized biography of Todd that was published in 2018, 60 years after his term of office ended. (Susan Woodhouse: “Garfield Todd: The End of the Liberal Dream in Rhodesia.” Weaver Press, 2018.)

Vale: Joan Child

Published by peter on 2013-03-04 in Obituaries and Politics. 0 Comments

Child-Joan-Speaker
The death has occurred of Mrs Joan Child (1921-2013), first female Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives (1986-1989) and Labor MHR for Henty in Melbourne (1974-1975, 1980-1990).  She was the first female Labor Party MHR, and only the fourth woman elected to the House.   That it took 73 years for the Australian Labor Party to elect a woman to the Lower House of Federal Parliament is quite telling about attitudes in the Party and in the wider society.  As Speaker, she refused to wear the traditional wig and gown, and was always very down-to-earth.   On the evening before the Queen’s opening of the new Australian Commonwealth Parliament House in 1988, for instance, Madame Speaker Child could be found relaxing where she often went – having a drink and playing the pokies at the Canberra Labor Club.  She was always quite approachable there, too.
Her SMH obit is here.
POSTSCRIPT (2013-03-29):  Here is James Button, son of former Labor Industry Minister, Senator John Button, writing about the ALP:

Outside Albania, was there ever a more macho party than the old ALP?  Its first female member of the House of Representatives, Joan Child, was not elected until 1974, thirty-one years after Enid Lyons became the first female conservative MP.  It was a party that prized hardness, humour, guts and aggression:  men who could hold their drink, hold their tongue when they had to, and hold their own in argument.  Its language was vivid, often vulgar.  Doing the numbers for Hawke, his backer Graham Richardson once said, was ‘better than sex and almost as exciting as a good feed’.”  (Button 2013, page 126 of large print edition)

James Button [2012]: Speechless:  A Year in my Father’s Business.  Melbourne, Australia:  Melbourne University Press.

Artists concat

Published by peter on 2013-03-04 in Art, Concats, Creativity and Culture. 0 Comments

Here is a listing of visual artists whose work speaks to me.  Minimalists and geometric abstractionists are over-represented, relative to their population in the world.  In due course, I will add posts about each of them.

  • Carel Fabritius (1622-1654)
  • Shi Tao (1641-1720)
  • Jin Nong (1687-c.1763)
  • Richard Wilson (1714-1782)
  • Thomas Jones (1742-1803)
  • Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849)
  • Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
  • John Sell Cotman (1782-1842)
  • Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858)
  • Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
  • Richard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828)
  • Thomas Chambers (1808-1869)
  • Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
  • Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842-1910)
  • Robert Delaunay (1885-1941)
  • Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943)
  • Alma Thomas (1891-1978)
  • Stuart Davis (1892-1964)
  • Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893-1965)
  • László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)
  • Kotozuka Eiichi (1906-1979)
  • Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912–2004)
  • Agnes Martin (1912-2004)
  • Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
  • Gunther Gerzso (1915-2000)
  • Michael Kidner (1917-2009)
  • Guanzhong Wu (1919–2010)
  • Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923- )
  • Fred Williams (1927-1982)
  • Donald Judd (1928-1994)
  • Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)
  • Henry Munyaradzi (1931-1998)
  • Bridget Riley (1931- )
  • Norval Morrisseau (1932–2007)
  • Dan Flavin (1933-1996)
  • Patrick Tjungurrayi (1935-2018)
  • Jean-Pierre Bertrand (1937- )
  • Peter Campus (1937- )
  • Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980)
  • Prince of Wales Midpul (c.1937-2002)
  • Peter Struycken (1939- )
  • Alighiero e Boetti (1940-1994)
  • Alice Nampitjinpa (1943- )
  • Helicopter Tjungurrayi (1947- )
  • Cildo Meireles (1948- )
  • Jeremy Annear (1949- )
  • Louise van Terheijden (1954- )
  • Doreen Reid Nakamarra (1955-2009)
  • Peter Doig (1959- )
  • Katie Allen
  • Els van ‘t Klooster (1985- )
  • Este MacLeod

Gradgrinds de nos jours

Published by peter on 2013-03-03 in Mathematics and Religion. 0 Comments

Peter Hitchens reviews the latest jeremiad from Anthony Grayling in The Spectator, here:

‘Atheism is to theism,’ Anthony Grayling declares, ‘as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting’.  At this point, we are supposed to enjoy a little sneer, in which the religious are bracketed with bald, lonely men in thick glasses, picking over their collections of ancient stamps in attics, while unbelievers are funky people with busy social lives.

But the comparison is flatly untrue.  Non-collectors of stamps do not, for instance, write books devoted to mocking stamp-collectors, nor call for stamp-collecting’s status to be diminished, nor suggest — Richard Dawkins-like — that introducing the young to this hobby is comparable to child abuse.  They do not place advertisements on buses proclaiming that stamp-collecting is a waste of time, and suggesting that those who abandon it will enjoy their lives more.

Professor Grayling is too pleased with himself to have realised this. Intoxicated with amusement at his own dud metaphor, he asks: ‘How could someone be a militant non-stamp-collector?’  I rather think he has written the manual for anyone who might like to take up this activity.

It strikes me, once again, that the new atheists – particularly Grayling, Dawkins, Dennett, and C. Hitchens – want to show the world that they can think for themselves, that they are beholden not to churchly prince nor earthly potentate, neither to ideology nor tradition, in the formulation and articulation of their own views.   But thinking for themselves seems somehow insufficient to each of these people:  they want also to think for everyone else, to impose on the rest of us their own personal view.    Perhaps it’s that common affliction of people lacking in self-confidence:  by getting others to adopt their judgments (or beliefs, or consumer purchases, or career path), they can validate their own choices.

As I have remarked before, in my experience most people who profess religious belief and/or undertake religious practices do so because of some personal, transcendant experience they have had with non-material realms, or what they perceive to be such realms.  Grayling et al. tell all these people that they are each wrong:  Here’s what you should believe, not the evidence of your own lying eyes!   Who knows, our little Graylings may even be correct, and objective science may even – one day long in the future – show the delusion or invalidity of these many billions of subjective experiences. But, in the meantime, it surely takes industrial-strength levels of presumption to assume that your own personal subjective viewpoint takes precedence over the subjective lived experience of others.

 
Noticeable too, is the complete absence of any sense of wonder or awe at the unknown and the not-yet-explained in the writings of these folks (Sam Harris excepted).   It is remark-worthy, I think, that none of these people are poets, or artists, or musicians, or mathematicians, all people who seek regularly to wrangle the transcendent.   Gradgrinds the new atheists seem to be, as well as arrogantly presumptious.

Our impact on others

Published by peter on 2013-03-03 in Mathematics and Matherati. 0 Comments

JOHN-Fritz 1953
A nice story about the possibly unknown effects of our actions, from a review by mathematician Marjorie Senechal of a book about German Jewish mathematicians:

Fritz John (1910–1994) [pictured in 1953], Jewish on his father’s side, left Germany in 1933 for England; in 1935 he was appointed assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.  Back in the 1930s, the University of Kentucky was small and isolated but, except for two years of war-related work, John stayed there until 1946, when he moved permanently to New York University.  Surely he was glad to rejoin his mentor, [mathematician Richard] Courant.  But he made a difference in Lexington; I don’t know if he ever knew it.

I grew up near Lexington and took piano lessons from a teacher in town named Helen Lipscomb.  Helen was a polio victim, confined to a wheelchair; her brother, Bill, was a chemist at the University of Minnesota.  I met Bill Lipscomb for the first time in 2009, two years before he died at the age of ninety-two.  By then he’d taught at Harvard for forty years and earned a Nobel prize (1976) [in Chemistry] for his work on boranes.  Unlike me, Bill had attended the University of Kentucky after a Lexington public high school; he’d had a music scholarship and studied chemistry on the side.  “Why did you decide to become a chemist instead of a musician?” I asked him. “What changed your mind?” “A math class,” he told me. “A math class taught by a German named Fritz John.” (page 213)

Reference:
Marjorie Senechal [2013]:   Review of:   Birgit Bergmann, Moritz Epple, and Ruti Ungar (Editors):  Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture.   Springer Verlag, 2012.  Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 60 (2):  209-213.  Available here.

Vale: John Makumbe

Published by peter on 2013-03-02 in Africa and Obituaries. 0 Comments

This post is a humble tribute to Zimbabwean political scientist, John Makumbe (1949-2013), who has just died.  I first met him in Zimbabwe in 1981, and once traveled with him to Botswana.  We had many conversations on religion, where we often disagreed greatly.  He became an outspoken and fearless opponent of Robert Mugabe’s corrupt regime, and had been planning to stand for election for his home region, Buhera, to the Zimbabwe House of Assembly at the forthcoming national elections.

The Telegraph (London) obituary is here, The Zimbabwe Mail here, and Nehanda Radio here.