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Mathematician Claims New Yorker Defamed Him
An anonymous reader writes, "Last month the New Yorker ran the article 'Manifold Destiny' (slashdotted here), by Sylvia Nasar, author of 'A Beautiful Mind.' Now a renowned Harvard mathematics professor, Dr. Shing-Tung Yau, is claiming the article defamed him. His attorney wrote the New Yorker a letter (PDF) threatening that Yau will have 'no choice but to consider other options' if Nasar, her co-author, and the New Yorker fail to undo the damage done."
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shing-Tung_Yau and the New Yorker piece. Yau supposledy tried to take credit for Perelmans work on the Poincare conjecture, publishing a solution after Perelman published his on arxiv, calling Perelmans 'incomplete' and saying he and his students didn't understand it.
I'm not far enough along in my math studies (will I ever be?) to understand their papers, but if it's true Yau is pretty sleazy.
In my mind, yes. Using these kinds of tactics is precisely what the New Yorker accused Yau of doing.
While the New Yorker article was not particularly favorable to Dr. Yau, it didn't seem to me that it could be called defamation. Indeed, to the extent that it says negative things about him, they seem to be coming from his peers in mathematics - and not from the writer of the article. Is that a sufficient defense against a legal claim of defamation? I guess that is for the courts to decide.
More importantly, by suing for defamation, Dr. Yau appears to be manifesting exactly the kind of behavior that he was described as having in the article. One mathematician is quoted as saying "Yau wants to be the king of geometry. He believes that everything should issue from him, that he should have oversight. He doesn't like people encroaching on his territory.". Another says : "This is a guy who did magnificent things... He won every prize to be won. I find it a little mean of him to seem to be trying to get a share of this as well."
The article also stole the title from one of my favorite cooking books. Damn confusing, that.
Whee... I love Slashdot readers! As usual, nobody feels obliged to read the original article, or the response, before blasting thier commentary. Dr. Yau isn't just some Harvard mathematician; he's heavily connected into Chinese politics and education. The article, if true, suggests that he's built that base on stealing the work of others. This isn't defaming his math career; this is going to cause enormous damage politically, if it's true.
I'm not claiming it's true or not -- there are two totally opposing views, neither with particularly good evidence. But before you're all "lol lawyerz are teh suck", figure out what's going on.
I am sure Dr. Yau has an ego and thinks of himself as awesome, but the New Yorker article went a bit over the top. In no way has Dr. Yau ever said Perelman does not deserve the Fields medal and that he (Dr. Yau) does (as the letter points out: He already has one and is no longer eligible because of his age).
As far as 're-hashing' the work: that is what is done when the proof of a conjecture is not well understood or even confirmed to be a proof. 'Re-hashing' is what mathematicians world-wide are doing with Perelman's work in order to see whether his work is valid. It is part of the mathematical process. And it does not seem that Dr. Yau is claiming that Perelman's work is wrong or useless...in fact, quite the opposite. He has publically stated that Perelman deserves the Fields medal.
It's true that the Chinese pair did contribute something highly non-trivial in filling in the details left by Perelman, so in this sense it's not unreasonable for Yau to claim a certain amount of credit for this. However, given the past history, he looks an awful lot like someone vociferously aggrieved to have been accused of robbing a bank in New York when he was actually robbing a bank in Chicago at the time.
Suing journalists is high-profile and attracts attention. The effect of these Chinese politics on journal publishing in differential geometry in the US, particularly for young mathematicians forced to tread on egg-shells and play off one ego against another, happens behind the scenes but is far more damaging for our subject in the long-run.
Not 'in the top' at the top. Yau is a smart man, I've already said that, and winning the Fields Medal was a big event for him. But it wasn't enough. Fields Medal winners don't end up in the Math books really. Or the History books (except as side notes). People who solve things like Poincare however get proofs and other such things named after them that people will study and remember for centuries.
Do you see the difference? Yau is driven to be at the very top of the pyramid, he wants people to know who he was hundreds of years from now, he wants people studying Math to Know his name. And to be honest I applaud him for his drive, however this whole thing should be beneath him and that he did it does not speak well of him. I've seen this before, brilliant young minds become average older ones. I fear that Yau may have gone the same way and no longer be the bright man he once was, but merely an embittered hack. And that in its own way is a tragic story too. His trying to take credit for the Poincare solution was lame. This lawsuit is just pathetic.
Science and Math should not take place in courtrooms.
Yau is an extremely brilliant mathematician who has proven, amongst others, The positive energy theorem and has received the Fields medal (the Nobel prize of math) for his work.
I can't believe you were modded +5 Interesting for this, but then again, this is slashdot, where shortsighted blanket statements are more interesting than hard facts. Sigh ...
1. A small explanation of denormal numbers (written as decimal for simplicity's sake):
Usually, floating point numbers are represented as a.bcdef * 10^+/-gh , where a != 0.
Using that rule, the smallest float would be 1.0000 * 10 ^ -99.
Now, if you want it smaller, but without using more storage space for the expnonent, you ditch that a!=0 rule.
Without this rule, you can have numbers such as 0.0098*10^-99, which are smaller, but less precise (because they have less significant digits).
Of course, in reality, computers do not use decimal notation, but rather binary. So any "normal" float has a=1 (because there only is 0 and 1, and 0 is forbidden). Because of this, a usually isn't even stored. Which makes it necessary that denormal numbers must be tagged in some special way to identify them as such, usually by using some reserved value for the exponent.
ObTrivia: old HP calculators (which did use decimal notation internally) behaved in some very interesting way when presented with denormal numbers, especially in the role of a divisor.
2. A small explanation of the joke: if the New York would have denormalled him, they would have made him smaller than the smallest quantity, i.e. the ultimate humiliation.
In it, he claims there was never any battle, and that his paper merely established the "first complete proof applying [Perelman's] and Professor Hamilton's work." But if I understand my mathematics nomenclature correctly, isn't that the exact act of trying to establish priority? He's actually saying, "I've (or my students have) PROVED the theorem, Perelman and Hamilton have both done work allowing me to do so." Of course, since what Perelman did is considered by many mathematicians to actually BE the first complete proof, Yau's letter essentially confirms what he's being accused of doing. The fight is about who has the first complete proof, not how much recognition Perelman should have been received in the paper.
Legally, this sounds like a lot of hot air. The letter isn't a legal document, and well-established precedents in defamation law protect journalists in cases such as this where the event is easily newsworthy and the people involved have become public figures. Yau is relying less on any legal basis he has, and more on being able to use the letter as evidence that he's outraged by his portrayal in the article.