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
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 8, 2017 at 7:52 | comment | added | The_Sympathizer | "But then, gobbling papers is not how leading mathematicians (or scientists) actually operate. By making judicious choices of what to pursue when, and with sufficient brilliance and vision, it is possible even today to make decisive contributions to many fields." Where is this "proper operating technique" and "how to choose what to pursue when" taught/learned? At what point in the proper education does it appear? | |
| Jun 15, 2010 at 9:42 | vote | accept | Harry Gindi | ||
| Jun 13, 2010 at 23:29 | comment | added | John Stillwell | I don't think we need complete statistics to see that it became impossible to keep up with the mathematical literature by the mid 18th century. Euler alone produced work that took nearly a century for others to notice. For example, his 1751 discovery of addition theorems for elliptic integrals did not bear fruit until Jacobi picked the idea in the 1820s. And by then the mathematical community had to catch up with the work of Lagrange, Gauss, Abel, Jacobi ... (and they hadn't even noticed Galois yet). | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 17:57 | comment | added | Charles Matthews | Indeed, if you want general background, reading the research literature would be a last resort. The sheer number of papers has a great deal to do with library budgets, also. The remark that growth is exponential does support the idea that the change might come rather suddenly. (By the way Cartier once said something like "Serre has no idea what a Laplacian is", which is not to be taken literally but an indication of non-universality in a very versatile algebraist.) | |
| Jun 13, 2010 at 15:35 | history | answered | Tim Perutz | CC BY-SA 2.5 |