A paper of mine (relatively junior mathematician) was just accepted in a good journal, and I was considering adding a dedication to the memory of a mathematician in my area that passed away, and whose work I admire a lot. The topic of the paper is closely related to the work of said mathematician, however I have never met them personally, or communicated with them in any way. Would it be appropriate for me to add such dedication, or is this usually reserved to more established mathematicians, or mathematicians that knew each other well? Do journals have typically a problem with adding dedications after the referring process? I am guessing 'no', but I am asking anyway.
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9$\begingroup$ The journal is unlikely to object to your dedication. $\endgroup$– LuciaCommented Dec 7, 2018 at 23:56
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3$\begingroup$ However, there are others who might object. It is best to contact the department or family and ask for permission. This is the sort of thing where asking for forgiveness is the worse alternative. Gerhard "And Is Hard To Undo" Paseman, 2018.12.07. $\endgroup$– Gerhard PasemanCommented Dec 8, 2018 at 0:27
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4$\begingroup$ The wording matters. Don't write "in memory of" for someone you never met. Something like "dedicated to.." is acceptable, but not common these days. Consider whether you will feel just as happy about it when you review your paper 10 years from now. $\endgroup$– Brendan McKayCommented Dec 8, 2018 at 1:05
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10$\begingroup$ Of course you can add. And nobody will object. I do not understand the remark of Gerhard Passman at all. $\endgroup$– Alexandre EremenkoCommented Dec 8, 2018 at 1:54
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5$\begingroup$ @DavidG.Stork "because it implies some sort of professional connection between the author and the scholar that (especially here) does not exist." That's an interesting point of view. I wonder how widespread it is. It has never occurred to me that dedications could be considered as declarations of professional connections. I rather viewed them as pure declarations of admiration (and you do not need to be professionally connected to someone to admire them or their work). $\endgroup$– fedjaCommented Dec 8, 2018 at 15:09
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1 Answer
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In math, dedications are rare but not unheard of. They are most common in birthday conference proceedings, or special issues devoted to summarizing a person's life work. For example, consider the following papers that have a birthday dedication:
Gunnells - Robert MacPherson and arithmetic groups
Nollet and Schlesinger - Curves on a Double Surface
Mulase and Zhang - Polynomial recursion formula for linear Hodge integrals
International journal of Numerical Analysis and Modeling, volume 15, number 4
Kinoshita, Power, and Takeyama - Sketches
International Conference On Logical Algebras and Semi-rings
I found these and dozens more by searching Google for "math" "dedicated to" "occasion" "birthday". Similarly, there are plenty of examples dedicated to the memory of a mathematician who recently died ("math" "dedicated to" "memory of"):
Rowell - An Invitation to the Mathematics of Topological Quantum Computation
Differential Equations and Applications, volume 10, number 1
Propp - Exponentiation and Euler measure
Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems - Series B, volume 21, number 2
People have also dedicated papers to non-mathematicians, e.g., Chris Kapulkin dedicated this paper to his mother.
There is ample evidence that the journal will not normally object to a dedication. I have even seen papers dedicated to the memory of Grothendieck, by authors who are unlikely to have known him simply because of the large gap between when he left mathematics and when these papers were written. It's clear that someone's work could have a big impact on a young researcher, even if the two never met. I would say it's "not inappropriate" to write a dedication in such a situation, even if it's rare.
In the papers above, you see some dedications right under the author name and above the abstract, and you see others that are a sentence in the acknowledgments. For a junior author dedicating a paper to a senior mathematician they never met, I'd err on the side of putting it in the acknowledgments so you have more space, to write a full sentence about how that person's work touched your life. The short style above the abstract of simply "This paper is dedicated to X" might raise a question in the mind of the reader, though, to be honest, I think most people would ignore the dedication regardless of where you put it. Lastly, there were two threads on academia.SE about dedications:
answered Mar 25 at 12:37
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$\begingroup$ That Kapulkin paper is interesting, because he's not the only author. I'd be interested, in an extremely idle way, to know if there had ever been any circumstances of disagreement among authors about whether, and to whom, to dedicate a paper, and how it was resolved. (I do not believe, or have any reason to believe, that such is the case here; I'm just wondering in general.) The answers to such a question would of course be too idiosyncratic to make it appropriate for MO or AcademiaSE, though. $\endgroup$– LSpiceCommented Mar 25 at 15:48
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1$\begingroup$ @LSpice I once asked a co-author if we could dedicate a paper to someone and he said no. So, I'll do that on a solo-authored paper someday. $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 25 at 15:50
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$\begingroup$ Re, I guess my curiosity had exactly the right amount of idleness to be gratified. I'm sorry that your co-author was unwilling; unless for some reason I specifically disapproved of the subject of the dedication, I don't think I can imagine objecting to a "the first-named author dedicates the paper to …"-type statement. $\endgroup$– LSpiceCommented Mar 25 at 15:51