Slashdot Mirror
Fields Medals Awarded To 4 Mathematicians (nytimes.com)
Every four years, at an international gathering of mathematicians, the subject's youngest and brightest are honored with the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The New York Times: This year's recipients, announced on Wednesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, include one of the youngest ever: Peter Scholze, a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn who is 30 years old. Two weeks ago, Peter Woit, a professor at Columbia University who blogs about mathematics and physics, was among those who anticipated that Dr. Scholze would receive the medal. Dr. Woit said Dr. Scholze was "by far the most talented arithmetic geometer of his generation." By custom, Fields medals are bestowed to mathematicians 40 years old or younger. That means Dr. Scholze would have still been eligible for another two rounds of medals. The medal, first awarded in 1936, was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician. The youngest winner, Jean-Pierre Serre in 1954, was 27. The other Fields medalists this year are Caucher Birkar, 40, of the University of Cambridge in England; Alessio Figalli, 34, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich; and Akshay Venkatesh, 36, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Stanford University in California. Peter Scholze's award cites "the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry," the study of shapes that arise from the rational-number solutions to polynomial equations (like xy3 + x2 = 1 or x2 â" y3z = 3). More about him here. As a mathematician, Caucher Birkar has helped bring order to the infinite variety of polynomial equations -- those equations that consist of different variables raised to various powers. No two equations are exactly alike, but Birkar has helped reveal that many can be neatly categorized into a small number of families. [As a reader pointed out, Birkar's award was stolen within minutes of him receiving it.] UPDATE (8/4/18): Organizers have announced they'll provide an identical replacement medal.
Once a classics student with no particular affinity for mathematics, Alessio Figalli has gone on to shake the venerable mathematical discipline of analysis, which concerns the properties of certain types of equations. Figalli's results have provided a refined mathematical understanding of everything from the shape of crystals to weather patterns, to the way ice melts in water. Akshay Venkatesh, a former prodigy who struggled with the genius stereotype, has won a Fields Medal for his "profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics."
Once a classics student with no particular affinity for mathematics, Alessio Figalli has gone on to shake the venerable mathematical discipline of analysis, which concerns the properties of certain types of equations. Figalli's results have provided a refined mathematical understanding of everything from the shape of crystals to weather patterns, to the way ice melts in water. Akshay Venkatesh, a former prodigy who struggled with the genius stereotype, has won a Fields Medal for his "profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics."
Oddly the Fields Medal given to Birkar was stolen after the ceremony. We looked everywhere for it, but never found it. If you see anything that looks like a Field Medal on eBay please let me know.
If only higher math was useful.
Over and over again, fields of mathematics that were believed to have no possible application whatsoever have turned out to be critical to our understanding of some field of science. Group theory, for example, was once believed to be pure mathematics with no possible use, but now it's central to our understanding of physics.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Caucher Birkar was an Iranian Kurd who entered the UK as a refugee. You know, exactly the kind of person the xenophobes that gave us Brexit (and are ironically also dominating EU politics) would rather not let in.
Akshay Venkatesh was born in Delhi 2 years before his parents migrated to Australia, that other Commonwealth nation presently dominated by rabid anti-immigration policies. Gee, I wonder if he would still be let in today...
Looks like we need to expect a surge in scientific advancements in a decade or so coming from Canada, being the largest of the countries in the Western World that still have a welcoming attitude toward immigrants.
And don't give me "those are not the kind of immigrants we want to hold back". That falls in the same category as "I'm not a racist, why, I even have friends who are not white." To give just one counter-argument, there's no way anyone could have known that the 2-years-old Venkatesh would grow up to be a prodigy.
While Mathematics does not have a Grand Unified Theory equivalent, the millennium prize problems are considered most challenging mathematical problems that are still unsolved. And some of them definitely have real world implications (e.g. P vs NP problem).
Indeed! And that doesn't count all the cryptological applications of higher math, either.
Finding God in a Dog
Well, let's turn that around - if someone is going to be a genius somewhere, wouldn't you rather that they were a genius in your country, and teaching your country's students, so they can help develop your country's economy? I think most people a greedy enough to want this. I would argue that this constitutes a form of enlightened self-interest. I would further argue that xenophobia gets in the way of this enlightened self-interest. One need only look at how Nazi anti-Jewish policies contributed to the United States developing atomic weapons as an example.
Finding God in a Dog
To more directly answer your question: if we exclude students and other academic talent from American/Australian/UK universities - which have for decades been the best place for academics to find a home - on account of their country of origin, then those universities suffer. Eventually, those best minds go elsewhere, and in this case, it wouldn't have been Delhi, but some other place with a larger wealth of talent in a country with better immigration policies. And then those universities will attract the best talent instead - eventually to include the brightest minds from the US, Australia, UK. Afterwards, the tendency of persons not to want to move away from a good thing, will mean that those bright minds settle there and contribute to those economies and technologies.
In short, we would see a brain drain - out of the US/UK/AU - into CAN, DE, FR. This is already starting to happen in some fields.
Finding God in a Dog
Can you give a concrete example?
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9781441969491
I don't see anything in that link giving an example where "one expression [is] equivalent to 0 in one case, but the same expression in another equation is not".
My guess is that this indicates you made an error in calculation.
You are confusing immigration with invasion. If someone wants to be apart of another country, adopt that counties attitudes, values, and ideals and language, that should be encouraged. When Werner von braun came to the USA and helped build the Saturn V, he was not waving the NAZI flag and loudly calling for the extermination of USAian sovreighnty. When the most important Jewish refugees came to the USA and made up the backbone of the Manhatten project, they were not shitting on the USA the whole time.
This new generation of so called immigrants is not coming to be apart of the USA, they are coming to conquer if. We have "immigrants" who wave the Mexican flag, speak Spanish, and call for the elimination of USAian control over its borders. That is not immigration. I feel a similar thing is happening in Europe. Are the poor disadvantaged immigrants happy and proud to be apart of their new country? Or are they demanding that their new country addopt Islam, and speak a different language, and accept the way they dress.
Dont be so kind, trusting, and generous that people take advabtage of you generosity and abuse you. This is essentially what is happening with the immigration debate.