most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-26T04:40:54Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/76580 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc sigma_z_1980 2011-09-28T00:14:03Z 2011-09-30T03:21:52Z

<p>I've been motivated by <a href="http://mathoverflow.net/questions/7120/too-old-for-advanced-mathematics/7122#7122" rel="nofollow">this</a> question about starting to study mathematics at an unusually advanced age. It would be nice to know examples of people who <strong>successfully switched from a very different field</strong> into mathematics.</p> <p>Which well-known mathematicians, past or present, <strong>started out as law/art/humanities/business students</strong>, but later turned to mathematics? This excludes mathematicians who switched from the sciences or engineering to mathematics such as Raoul Bott.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76581#76581 MTS 2011-09-28T00:18:15Z 2011-09-28T00:18:15Z

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat" rel="nofollow">Fermat</a> was a lawyer.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76582#76582 Robert Israel 2011-09-28T00:26:50Z 2011-09-28T00:26:50Z

<p>Cayley was a lawyer by profession for 14 years.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76584#76584 David Corwin 2011-09-28T00:33:17Z 2011-09-28T00:33:17Z

<p>Noam Elkies is a musician and composer.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76672#76672 Robert Israel 2011-09-28T18:51:20Z 2011-09-28T18:51:20Z

<p>Hermann Grassmann studied theology, classical languages, philosophy, and literature in university, but not mathematics or physics.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76675#76675 Margaret Friedland 2011-09-28T19:18:15Z 2011-09-28T19:18:15Z

<p>Daniel Bernoulli. I am not sure if he counts, because he knew he wanted to study mathematics. Yet his formal education was in business and medicine. According to Wikipedia,</p> <p>"Around schooling age, his father, Johann Bernoulli, encouraged him to study business, there being poor rewards awaiting a mathematician. However, Daniel refused, because he wanted to study mathematics. He later gave in to his father's wish and studied business. His father then asked him to study in medicine, and Daniel agreed under the condition that his father would teach him mathematics privately, which they continued for some time."</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76677#76677 Yannic 2011-09-28T19:24:26Z 2011-09-28T22:09:55Z

<p>Marcel-Paul "Marco" Schützenberger studied medicine before obtained his second doctorate, in mathematics. He also work in formal linguistics with Noam Chomsky and Stephen Cole Kleene.</p> <p>For a short biography, see</p> <p><a href="http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Schutzenberger.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Schutzenberger.html</a></p> <p>or</p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel&#8208;Paul_Sch&#252;tzenberger" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel&#8208;Paul_Sch&#252;tzenberger</a></p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76680#76680 Michael Renardy 2011-09-28T19:44:33Z 2011-09-28T19:44:33Z

<p>Leibniz studied philosophy and law. He worked as a diplomat.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76681#76681 Philip Brooker 2011-09-28T19:49:29Z 2011-09-28T19:49:29Z

<p>Per Enflo is (sometimes) a concert pianist; see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Enflo#Piano" rel="nofollow">this section of his Wikipedia page</a>, also <a href="http://perenflo.com/" rel="nofollow">his web page</a>.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76683#76683 gowers 2011-09-28T20:03:13Z 2011-09-28T20:03:13Z

<p>My colleague <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/07/toy-inspires-new-spin-on-earths.html" rel="nofollow">Tadashi Tokieda</a> studied classics at university and switched to maths after being inspired by a book on the subject. I can't remember the exact details, but they are remarkable, as is he.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76684#76684 unknown (google) 2011-09-28T20:09:58Z 2011-09-28T20:09:58Z

<p>According to an interview of his, Kazuya Kato started off studying aerospace engineering (or something similar) before becoming interested in math. </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76688#76688 Richard Borcherds 2011-09-28T20:25:44Z 2011-09-28T20:25:44Z

<p>Karl Marx. So you didn't know he was a mathematician? A book of his collected mathematical papers is in our math library, which is more than most mathematicians can claim. (They are mostly attempts to understand the definition of a derivative if I recall correctly.) They were quite popular during the cultural revolution, Chinese mathematicians presumably figuring that the study of dialectical calculus was better then a one-way trip to one of Mao's holiday resorts. </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76689#76689 Slobodan Simić 2011-09-28T20:41:49Z 2011-09-28T20:41:49Z

<p>Henri Poincaré was a mining engineer. His first job was at the Corps des Mines as an inspector of mines. He participated in the rescue of miners trapped after an explosion, himself descending the shaft into the mine to investigate the cause of the explosion! Check <a href="http://www.gap-system.org/~history/HistTopics/Poincare_mines.html" rel="nofollow">this link</a> for details.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76692#76692 algori 2011-09-28T20:43:27Z 2011-09-28T20:43:27Z

<p>I remember reading an interview with Vladimir Arnold where he tells the following anecdote about Hassler Whitney. I don't have the interview in front of me, so some of the details may be not quite correct, but if memory serves, the story goes on like this.</p> <p>Whitney used to study music in America and at some point decided to spend a year in Germany. He arrived in G\"ottingen where it turned out that he had to take a course outside his main subject of study, which was music. He asked which one of the courses was the most difficult one. It turned out the most difficult subject was quantum mechanics. Whitney enrolled on that course. After the first lecture he came to see the professor and said </p> <p>-- I was one of the best students in Yale in my year, Herr Professor; how come I didn't understand a single word of the lecture?"</p> <p>--Well, you see, there are some prerequisites for this course. You have to know calculus and linear algebra and ....</p> <p>-- Are there any books where I can read all this up?</p> <p>It took Whitney a couple of weeks to work through the books the professor told him to read. In a month Whitney was able to follow the course, and he decided to switch to mathematics at the end of the semester.</p> <p>Arnold tells this story to illustrate the dangers of early specialization.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76693#76693 Piero D'Ancona 2011-09-28T20:56:03Z 2011-09-28T20:56:03Z

<p>I love this one: Harald Bohr was such a good soccer player that he was member of the Danish national team at the 1908 Olympiads. Two years later he got his PhD (apparently there was a large crowd at the event, a quite unusual occurrence for the math department) and went on to become a famous mathematician.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76698#76698 Noam D. Elkies 2011-09-28T21:40:05Z 2011-09-28T21:40:05Z

<p>Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695). A musical prodigy who by age 10 read fluently in four clefs and played the organ, two years before his first study of mathematical sciences (though admittedly 12 is not an "unusually advanced age" for that either...). This according to a display case at Leiden University which I saw at the ANTS-IV conference in 2000, and which reproduced some of his harmony exercises!</p> <p>Huygens kept up his interest in music, later in life publishing a treatise on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31_equal_temperament" rel="nofollow">a tuning of 31 equal notes to the octave</a>, an idea that apparently still has some currency in the Dutch music scene. According to Huygens' Wikipedia entry, the 20th volume of his 22-volume Collected works is titled <em>Musique et mathématique. Musique. Mathématiques de 1666 à 1695</em>.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76700#76700 Michael Hardy 2011-09-28T22:34:32Z 2011-09-28T22:34:32Z

<p>Paul Halmos was a graduate student in philosophy, and decided that subject was too hard, and became a graduate student in mathematics.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76707#76707 profilesserkansonel 2011-09-28T23:39:10Z 2011-09-29T10:59:45Z

<p>Edward Witten.(Fields Medalist) Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore (class of '68), and went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971. He planned to become a political journalist, and published articles in The New Republic and The Nation. In 1968 Witten published an article in The Nation arguing that the New Left had no strategy. He worked briefly for George McGovern, a Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. McGovern lost the election in a landslide to Richard Nixon. look at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1BcyxQCnoE&amp;feature=related" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1BcyxQCnoE&amp;feature=related</a> </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76725#76725 Keerthi Madapusi Pera 2011-09-29T04:38:04Z 2011-09-29T04:38:04Z

<p>Serge Lang started out as a graduate student of philosophy at Princeton, but he switched to math, because he had "finished it", it being philosophy. </p> <p>Here's the relevant part from his biography <a href="http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Lang.html" rel="nofollow">here</a></p> <p>"After returning to the United States, Lang went to Princeton University with the intention of studying for a doctorate in philosophy. After a year in the philosophy department, he changed to mathematics and Emil Artin became his thesis advisor."</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76766#76766 Timothy Chow 2011-09-29T14:30:38Z 2011-09-29T14:30:38Z

<p>Persi Diaconis left home at 14 to work with Dai Vernon as a magician. Trying to protect himself from being cheated in dishonest casinos, he was led to Feller's textbook on probability theory, which he couldn't understand. He started studying calculus at the City College of New York at the age of 24. Some more details may be found in <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/june9/diaconis-69.html" rel="nofollow">this article</a>.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76784#76784 Qfwfq 2011-09-29T17:48:16Z 2011-09-29T17:48:16Z

<p>I once read that the higher-category theorist <a href="http://www.cheng.staff.shef.ac.uk/" rel="nofollow">Eugenia Cheng</a> is also occasionally a concert pianist (she accompains <em>lieder</em> singers if I remember well).</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76580/famous-mathematicians-with-background-in-arts-humanities-law-etc/76823#76823 Deane Yang 2011-09-30T03:21:52Z 2011-09-30T03:21:52Z

<p>Frank Ryan isn't really a famous mathematician, but he was at one point famous and he did manage to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics. See <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1077719/index.htm" rel="nofollow">Sports Illustrated article on Frank Ryan</a></p>