Given alphabetical ordering of authors, how to establish level of contribution? I learned recently that in mathematics, the authorship order is virtually always alphabetical. I have recently collaborated on a paper where I did the vast majority of the work (everything but the problem statement and getting some references from the co-author to read, basically). What would be the proper way to establish the level of contributions of each author in the paper?
 A: Two of my published papers contain information about which of the authors did what.  In neither case did editors or referees object.  Of course, if you want to include such information in your paper, all the authors had better agree about exactly what to say.
A: Mathematical etiquette says you should not have anything in the paper that indicates who did what. You can tell your close friends, but that's about it.
A: Ordering the authors  alphabetically is the convention. The reason for introducing this convention is precisely to pre-empt  any attempt to say whose contribution is more valuable. You want to violate this convention.
(Some Hollywood movies list the actors names in the order of appearance, rather than by their star value.)
Even if you are able to do that,  defying convention has some consequences. Potential future collaborators may have second thoughts about collaborating with you.
I know a person who got his Ph.D. at a very young age and wanted that to be known to the world. He accomplished this in the dedication page, "To my parents for their wonderful support all these 22 years"!
You can  guess what others think of him now.
One (hard) way of accomplishing your aim  without offending any one is to publish many more papers of profound nature than that collaborator. (There is a theorem called Peter-Weyl theorem)
