Timeline for Mathematical research interrupted by a war
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
82 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 26, 2018 at 7:41 | answer | added | Nicola Ciccoli | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jan 7, 2018 at 13:05 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 7, 2018 at 15:43 | |||||
| Dec 22, 2017 at 0:49 | comment | added | Oddthinking | @ToddTrimble: I agree that list questions are problematic to the Stack Exchange model. But this is also a pound a nail with a shoe/glass bottle question. The question calls for bad research, and the answers comply without challenge, giving a misleading answers to any reader in the future. | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:50 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:46 | comment | added | LSpice | It was not the verb ('executed' vs 'killed') but the preposition ('by' vs 'in') on which I was commenting. (I actually simply copied the language from your Wikipedia link.) | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:43 | answer | added | Igor Khavkine | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:42 | answer | added | Ben McKay | timeline score: 6 | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:32 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @LSpice, in Russian "executed" is just a formal expression, as if an official, responsible for execution, declared that this was done (he would never say "killed"). But people on a street would most likely say "killed", since this is less formal. In English is this different? | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:01 | answer | added | Dongyu Wu | timeline score: 13 | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 17:44 | comment | added | LSpice | It doesn't obscure the meaning at all, but of course Schauder was executed by the Gestapo, not killed in Gestapo. | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 16:45 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | @Oddthinking I don't think answerers need to "do better": the anecdotes given are answers to the exact question displayed in the gray box. Now, the text of the OP might be problematic, where you see the assertion "war kills science" (an interesting topic, but undoubtedly beyond the scope of MO to address satisfactorily). But that's beyond the question asked, and no one is obliged to fix the text. (FWIW, I don't think this is a good question for MO, but MO sometimes indulges in creating big lists with sometimes interesting results, so as a site moderator I usually let the community decide.) | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 14:38 | answer | added | mathreadler | timeline score: -2 | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 6:27 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 23:01 | comment | added | Oddthinking | Red Herring fallacy - e.g. trying to divert the conversation continue in axiomatic logic, or accusing someone of being ungrateful when that has nothing to do with the discussion. Appeal to stone - e.g. denying that answers are anecdotes without any supporting reason. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 23:01 | comment | added | Oddthinking | @SergeiAkbarov: No, it isn't necessary to formalise axioms in order to make informal fallacies. Here are a few you may recognise: Cherry Picking - e.g. only looking for examples that support war interrupting research. Hasty Generalisation - e.g. concluding that war interrupts research based on a few anecdotes. Appeal to tradition - e.g. arguing that because it is traditional to make fallacies, it must be the best way | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 22:25 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @Oddthinking, you should axiomatize your logic before accusing somebody in logical fallacies. And accusing all of humanity is an ungrateful task. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 21:34 | comment | added | Oddthinking | @SergeiAkbarov: You are offering a defence of logical fallacies? That's a new one on me. Shortcuts in thinking that lead to incorrect understandings do not become acceptable just because they are traditional. I repeat my call to answerers to do better. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 16:49 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @Oddthinking, this is normal when people tell each other stories about what happened and what happens. An old tradition of mankind. And it happens very often that these stories are not just noise, they matter something. You can consider this as an excercise, whether the stories of Banach, or Hausdorff, or Doeblin, or Lindenbaum contain useful information, or not. At the same time nobody prevents you to gather statistics. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 16:26 | comment | added | Oddthinking | @SergeiAkbarov: I wonder if this is a language barrier. These are mostly text book examples of anecdotal evidence. If you try to use them to form an opinion on the question of whether war has a tendency to interrupt mathematical research, you are falling for a logical fallacy. These answers are misleading. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 15:57 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @Oddthinking, you can ask another question about metric. I do not find answers here anecdotic. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 15:42 | comment | added | Oddthinking | All of the answers so far, bar perhaps one attempt to answer this with anecdotes of people who were interrupted. That doesn't allow for the situation where these interruptions were merely noise compared to the total mathematical research of the time, or even that war boosted mathematical research. Perhaps a better approach would be to map a metric (such as papers published, or maybe you have a better one?) against the number of people dying in wars over time. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 14:17 | comment | added | Pierre | Wolfgang Döblin died in 1940 after discovering what we know as ito lemma... | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 10:43 | answer | added | polfosol | timeline score: -2 | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 6:42 | answer | added | Zurab Silagadze | timeline score: 9 | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 2:55 | answer | added | Agile_Eagle | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 17:46 | answer | added | user41593 | timeline score: 9 | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 12:06 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 20, 2017 at 17:55 | |||||
| Dec 19, 2017 at 9:48 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @EmanueleTron I think, you should add an answer about Hausdorff. | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 8:10 | answer | added | AntoineL | timeline score: 8 | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 7:47 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @moderators: I tried to delete this after Neil Strickland's explanation, but the system warned me that this is not good since there were already some answers. I do not know, perhaps this should be moved to another site... Let this be your decision. | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 7:31 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 19, 2017 at 7:05 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 18, 2017 at 20:39 | answer | added | Noah Snyder | timeline score: 8 | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 16:35 | answer | added | Asaf Karagila♦ | timeline score: 10 | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 15:29 | answer | added | Alexandre Eremenko | timeline score: 10 | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 13:56 | comment | added | Steve Huntsman | "[Leray's] main work in topology was carried out while he was in a prisoner of war camp in Edelbach, Austria from 1940 to 1945. He concealed his expertise on differential equations, fearing that its connections with applied mathematics could lead him to be asked to do war work." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Leray | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 13:08 | comment | added | Arthur | I would rather say that war moves engineering. Without having any sources to go on other than my gut, I would think it reasonable that if you want a military edge in a war, you don't often go do science and discover new things. You take the things science says ought to be possible, and find ways to actually make it happen in the real world (the Manhattan project comes to mind). Or you take something that exists but is too expensive (or unreliable), and you find ways to make it much cheaper (or sturdier) so that you can supply your army (for instance, air planes during first world war) | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 11:10 | comment | added | Michael Greinecker | I'm not the most competent person to turn this into a good answer, but Wolfgang Döblin comes to mind. | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 4:00 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 18, 2017 at 3:52 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @YCor I corrected this. | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 3:51 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 18, 2017 at 3:14 | comment | added | YCor | The title does not fit the question. A mathematical research can be interrupted because a mathematician decides to get involved in the war (for whatever reasons) and leaves math research (I can think of Turing or von Neumann, although I'm unable to claim that they completely left math research). A contrario, an inactive mathematician can have an unhappy destiny, and this does not affect mathematical research. | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 3:07 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Todd Trimble | ||
| Dec 17, 2017 at 23:10 | answer | added | Victor Protsak | timeline score: 18 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 21:02 | comment | added | Francois Ziegler | @KConrad, Jyrki: Generally, segregating history of mathematics to another site is, in my opinion and experience, unfortunate. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 20:56 | answer | added | Yly | timeline score: 15 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:50 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Jyrki, I don't know about HSM.SE, but the political views here do not differ much in my opinion. I expected more or less this picture. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:43 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | I am undecided, leaving it for mods and the others to decide. I'm not sufficiently informed about whether this is on-topic at MathOverflow. On the other hand HSM.SE is still in beta, so the question might disappear if the site doesn't lift off. Unfortunately (but also understandably) political opinions of the affected mathematicians seem to have poisoned the discussion somewhat. HSM.SE might be more immune to that? | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:38 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @JyrkiLahtonen I have no objections. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:37 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | May be the sister site dedicated to history of mathematics and sciences would be more appropriate for this? | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:34 | history | reopened |
Andrés E. Caicedo Will Sawin Leo Alonso paul garrett user1073 |
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:15 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Gangsters come to your house and say: "you can either be killed immediately or we'll make a vaccine from you". I would not call this "safe haven". But I'll remove the mentioning of experiment. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:09 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:53 | comment | added | Martin Argerami | From the article: "Banach was employed as lice feeder at Professor Rudolf Weigl's Typhus Research Institute. Employment in Weigl's Institute provided many unemployed university professors and their associates protection from random arrest and deportation to Nazi concentration camps." The implication from the article seems to be that, without a university job and risking deportation, the institute worked as a safe haven. As for lice-feeding, the corresponding Wikipedia article doesn't describe it at all as an experiment, but as a method to produce a vaccine that was publicly released. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:50 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Martin, he had no choice. It was not like: "You can work as a professor in our university, or if you wish, you can feed lices. What do you prefer?" | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:46 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | "Lice-feeding" was not an experiment? I thought it was... | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:45 | comment | added | Martin Argerami | @SergeiAkbarov: unless he was offered "lice-feeding or concentration camp", he was a willing participant. The article is not clear on that point, and I have no other sources. Still, not an "experiment". | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:42 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @MartinArgerami, I think this is a big exaggeration: "he was a willing participant". When a person has a choice between a starvation death, a concentration camp and "lice-feeding", and he chooses "lice-feeding", this is not called "a willing participant". | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 16:35 | comment | added | Martin Argerami | It's your question, and it's not a big deal. According to the same article you quoted, Banach was forced out of the university, and as means to survive he worked as a "lice-feeder" for a lab that prepared typhus vaccines. It was partially dangerous (although no one ever died from the practice), but it was not an experiment and he was a willing participant. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 15:37 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Dec 17, 2017 at 17:18 | |||||
| Dec 17, 2017 at 15:11 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @MartinArgerami I think you can correct this. Or tell me, I'll do this. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 15:04 | comment | added | Martin Argerami | I don't think it is accurate to say that Banach "was an object of medical experiments during WWII". | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 15:04 | history | closed |
Neil Strickland R W Sergei Akbarov Steven Landsburg Joseph Van Name |
Not suitable for this site | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 14:52 | comment | added | user41593 | @KConrad Thanks, I was under the erroneous impression that they committed suicide after deportation. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 14:23 | answer | added | Alexandre Eremenko | timeline score: 18 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 14:05 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @KConrad yes, it seems to me, this would be a good solution. I don't know, which place is better, but I think this is not important. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 13:59 | comment | added | KConrad | This question could be moved to the history of science and math stackexchange site. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 13:53 | comment | added | KConrad | @EmanueleTron, Hausdorff did not die in a camp. He and his wife committed suicide at home when they received a summons that would eventually lead to them being moved to a camp if they followed it. The effect on his research was the same, but the circumstances surrounding his death should still be recorded accurately. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 12:37 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | @NeilStrickland I voted to close this. Or, maybe this can be moved somewhere... | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 12:30 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | I thought they were physisists. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 12:20 | comment | added | nick012000 | Why not consider the mathematicians whose careers were catapulted to success during the war? For instance, the war was monumental for the careers of mathematicians who worked on the Manhattan Project like Einstein and Oppenheimer. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 12:12 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Yes, Hausdorff is another example, thank you, Emmanuele. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 12:07 | comment | added | user41593 | You forgot Felix Hausdorff, who died a tragic death in an internment camp. This surely counts as interrupted research since during the first years of war he kept working tirelessly despite all hardship and would surely have continued to do so. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 11:45 | answer | added | Thomas Klimpel | timeline score: 24 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 11:36 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | Ah, I see. I did not notice that David's question was old, excuse me. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 11:33 | comment | added | Neil Strickland | I voted to close because this is not a mathematical question. I appreciate that it raises issues that some people might like to discuss, but I do not think that this is the right place. The linked question by David Hansen was from 2010; I believe that it would be closed if it was asked today. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 11:25 | comment | added | Sergei Akbarov | If people would explain why they voted to close this question, I would most likely delete it myself. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 9:55 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 17, 2017 at 15:06 | |||||
| Dec 17, 2017 at 9:11 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 8:47 | answer | added | მამუკა ჯიბლაძე | timeline score: 8 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 8:24 | history | edited | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 8:18 | history | asked | Sergei Akbarov | CC BY-SA 3.0 |