Timeline for A quote by Lev Landau about prime numbers
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
25 events
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| Dec 20, 2017 at 6:43 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 18, 2017 at 11:09 | comment | added | Uri Bader | I remember thinking the same thing about summing exponents, the first time I encountered the Fourier transform. That was some time ago. I also remember that when discussing the history of the above quote with Terry Tao, he mentioned that he likes to subtract primes. That was much later, but still some years ago... | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 9:20 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:39 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @lcv Absolutely Lev. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:39 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @WillJagy You and me both. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 8:40 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | @Icv: I agree with you. The point is that I cannot find any authoritative source. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 4:45 | comment | added | lcv | For example most physicists think the big/little-O notation is due to Lev | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 4:44 | comment | added | lcv | Are you sure it was Lev and not Edmund the mathematician? The webpage you are pointing doesn’t seem very authoritative. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 2:35 | comment | added | Will Jagy | @IgorRivin for the record, I thought it was a bad idea when Arpanet expanded beyond military and universities to, eventually, the general public. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 2:34 | comment | added | Will Jagy | @VictorProtsak one of the Reacher books by Lee Child, called Make Me, (a thriller) makes a good presentation of the dark web.. hmm, I was going to link the wikipedia article but it is full of spoilers. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 2:26 | comment | added | Victor Protsak | @Will: We all remember how George W Ashington misunderstimated the powers of the dark WEB by looking deep into his soul | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 2:00 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @WillJagy Web? I knew this before there was a web. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 1:00 | comment | added | Will Jagy | @IgorRivin I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said that quotes on the web are often misattributed | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 0:58 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @FrancescoPolizzi I will try to find the source, this is folklore in some circles... | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 0:20 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | @IgorRivin: thanks for the information! Is there any historical source for this (some mention in Vinogradov's papers, for instance)? | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 0:17 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | Landau said this not to Arnol'd but to Vinogradov, or at least on the occasion of Vinogradov's work on the Goldbach conjecture, in the 1930s, when Arnold was not old enough to have a conversation on the subject. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 23:20 | comment | added | user114642 | I believe you all of that. Do you love this quote: brainyquote.com/quotes/ralph_waldo_emerson_107450 | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 23:17 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | My point is that if there is no precise way to be sure that the statement is due to Landau, then it should be considered apocryphal. It happens that I teach number theory, and I like to be precise in the quotes, wherever possible. At any rate, are we sure that Landau never wrote this? | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 23:14 | comment | added | user114642 | How to prove that anyone said anything in the past? If I were next to Landau when he said that, and wrote somewhere that he said that, then that could classify as a proof (under certain assumptions) that he said that. Maybe Landau took that sentence about primes from some of his students, is then that statement his or of that student? | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 23:07 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | Well, Arnold's statement seems not very far away from the answer I gave to my student: did Landau really said this to Arnold, or Arnold just used the sentence as a "well-known" Landau quote? Secondly, I agree that asking on the forum of history of science could be an option, however there is still a tag "history" on MO. And it is still used, as far as I can see. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 23:00 | comment | added | user114642 | Maybe, just maybe, it would be better to ask that here: hsm.stackexchange.com | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 22:59 | comment | added | LSpice | Probably exactly the same Google research you did turns this up in an opinion piece by Arnol'd: p. 8, "'Why add prime numbers?' marvelled the great physicist Lev Landau. 'Prime numbers are made to be multiplied, not added!'" Of course this doesn't answer the question, but maybe suggests an answer like "he said it to Arnol'd"? | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 22:55 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 16, 2017 at 22:48 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 16, 2017 at 22:39 | history | asked | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |