Timeline for At what point in history did it become impossible for a person to understand most of mathematics?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
21 events
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| Nov 2, 2018 at 16:52 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://tea.mathoverflow.net/ with http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:58 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://mathoverflow.net/ with https://mathoverflow.net/
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| Jun 15, 2010 at 9:42 | vote | accept | Harry Gindi | ||
| Jun 13, 2010 at 17:23 | history | edited | Harry Gindi | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Jun 13, 2010 at 17:18 | comment | added | Jim Humphreys | I'm tempted to say that it depends on how you define "a person". For at least one person (myself), the point in time was the year I learned to read and write. That aside, even the greatest mathematicians I've known over the past half century wouldn't have pretended to understand that much mathematics. | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 15:35 | answer | added | Tim Perutz | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 12:59 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | I very much doubt that Professor Tao would object if I disagreed with you =). | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 12:51 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | Doesn't Terry Tao understand most of mathematics? | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 11:57 | comment | added | Robin Chapman | Charles, Hilbert's book is of course excellent, but is 1993 recent? | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 11:52 | history | edited | Harry Gindi | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:35 | comment | added | Charles Matthews | I think Theory of Algebraic Invariants, Hilbert lectures recently translated and reprinted for CUP, shows why we might still take Hilbert seriously as a geometer, given that he clearly had a sophisticate's view of moduli problems. | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:20 | comment | added | Wadim Zudilin | $ \dddot\smile $ | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:10 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | I agree, but I didn't want the other question reopened. | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:05 | comment | added | Wadim Zudilin | Harry, I just followed the links. Let me call the question not subjective but of a little maths interest. If somebody decides that univresal maths ended in year XXXX and justifies his answer, should I agree with him? :-) | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:04 | history | edited | Harry Gindi | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Jun 13, 2010 at 10:00 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | No, that's why I linked the meta thread. | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 9:59 | answer | added | Charles Matthews | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 9:58 | comment | added | Wadim Zudilin | Aren't you ask about who was the last universal mathematician? This is a very subjective question which is asked quite often (see, for example, blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2009/10/…). I would say that Hilbert is officially recognised as such, although I wonder about his serious contributions to geometry. | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 9:49 | comment | added | jeremy | To partly answer my own question, see: "Patterns of Research in Mathematics," Jerrold W. Grossman in AMS notices Jan 2005: ams.org/notices/200501/fea-grossman.pdf | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 9:34 | comment | added | jeremy | Is there any reliable historical proxy of some measure of the "amount" of math? Presumably, something like number of papers published vs time would roughly represent how much fields have grown. But this would only work for fairly recent times, since publishing was not so prolific now as was, say, 100 or 200 years ago. Are there easily accessible records of, say, the number of papers published each year going back a reasonable time? | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 9:27 | history | asked | Harry Gindi | CC BY-SA 2.5 |