Posted by Jonathan on March 8, 2003, at 6:50:49
In reply to Re: When you're 40 you're not as good looking? » kara lynne, posted by gabbix2 on March 5, 2003, at 15:52:30
... is winning a Fields Medal, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for mathematics.
Arguably the greatest achievement in 20th century mathematics was Andrew Wiles's elegant proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which this message is, regrettably, too small to contain :) Instead, please see:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/wiles.html (accessible interview with Wiles)
http://www.ams.org/notices/199507/faltings.pdf (short, for mathematicians)
The May 1995 issue (vol. 141, no. 5, pp. 443-572) of Annals of Mathematics (full proof, for modular elliptic curve buffs)Wiles didn't get a Fields Medal because, despite having worked obsessively on the problem since the age of ten, he was over forty when he reached the solution: benefactor John Fields had stipulated that only mathematicians under forty were eligible.
Some ambitious mathematicians, when they accept that they have no hope of a Fields Medal, embark on a new career in a different field such as psychiatry, in which they have a chance to win a Nobel (for Physiology and Medicine) with no age limit; perhaps we all know such a person :)
About a year ago, Bekka H. posted this explanation why there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics — http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020131/msgs/93154.html :
> The reason there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics is that Alfred Nobel's wife had an affair with a mathematician, and Nobel never got over his hatred of mathematicians. He decided all mathematicians were bad and none deserved a Nobel Prize. I've heard this story from a number of different sources, and I assume it's true.
I wonder whether the wife of John Fields had an affair with a forty-year-old :)
Jonathan (forty-something mathematician).
> I've seen lots of people who've grown more beautiful with age. Not in that "she's beautiful for 50" way either. Just plain beautiful.
> To show just how funny the age perspective is though. I read in a magazine at my Dr's office, that a group of high school students were asked in a survey what age they thought people stopped being interested in sex, and the average answer was "35"
poster:Jonathan
thread:205784
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030308/msgs/207084.html