Prominent non-mathematical work of mathematicians

Question

First of all, sorry if this post is not appropriate for this forum.

I have a habit that every time I read a beautiful article I look at the author's homepage and often find amazing things.

Recently I read a paper of Andrew Hicks and when I opened his homepage I found many links about his invention: Flawless wing mirrors (car mirror).

(Image Source)

I would not be surprised if this invention was made by a non-mathematician. His mirror is an amazing invention to me because every day I see it, but didn't know its inventor is a mathematician! Anyway, I want to ask

Question 1: Are there mathematicians who have done outstanding/prominent non-mathematical work like inventions, patents, solving social/economical/etc. problems, papers in these areas, etc.?

Of course, one can say that almost all technology nowadays is based on the work of mathematicians, but I'm asking for specific contributions/innovations.

I want to ask a similar question (Maybe it will be useful for those who are looking for a job!):

Question 2: Which mathematicians are working in non-mathematical areas/companies?

Note: Please add to your answers the name and the work of the mathematician.

Answer 1

Hans Freudenthal was a famous topologist. Indeed, the Freudenthal suspension theorem is the foundational result you need to get stable homotopy theory off the ground. He also invented a language, Lincos, "to make possible communication with extraterrestrial intelligence." And he invented a famous puzzle. And an asteroid is named after him.

Answer 2

Per Enflo is famous for solving Banach's basis problem, Grothendieck's approximation problem, and the invariant subspace problem for general Banach spaces, and has other fundamental research in linear and non linear geometric functional analysis. He also has done research in population dynamics. A child prodigy as a pianist, he continues to give concerts in Europe and the United States, but you can hear him at home by creating a Per Enflo station on Spotify.

Answer 3

James Garfield submitted an original proof of Pythagoras's theorem to the New-England Journal of Education and which was published in the April 1, 1876 issue.

He taught the liberal arts and practised law, he was also a brigadier-general in the Civil War.

He was also the 20th President of the USA, inaugurated in 1881. He developed the proof whilst a member of Congress.

Answer 4

Doctor Ahmed Chalabi earned a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1969, founded Petra Bank in 1977, was sentenced in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud in 1992, and (allegedly) very successfully lobbied for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Answer 5

The book by French mathematician Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. The book discusses the four stages of thought:

1. Preparation (conscious work setting up the problem and trying to solve it)

2. Incubation (no conscious work on the problem)

3. Illumination (the fruits of incubation where an insight is received) and finally

4. Verification (consciously testing and verifying the insight)

Gromov's Ergobrain Program for Universal learning program:

• Mischa Gromov, Great Circle of Mysteries: Mathematics, the World, the Mind, Springer (2018) doi:10.1007/978-3-319-53049-9 (see also the essay of the same name from 2015).

Answer 6

Danica McKellar may not qualify as a mathematician, but (all quotes below are from Wikipedia)

McKellar studied at the University of California, Los Angeles where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in Mathematics in 1998. As an undergraduate, she coauthored a scientific paper with Professor Lincoln Chayes and fellow student Brandy Winn titled "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on ${\bf Z}^2$." Their results are termed the "Chayes–McKellar–Winn theorem". Later, when Chayes was asked to comment about the mathematical abilities of his student coauthors, he was quoted in The New York Times, "I thought that the two were really, really first-rate." For her past collaborative work on research papers, McKellar is currently assigned the Erdős number four, and her Erdős–Bacon number is six.

Also, she

wrote six non-fiction books, all dealing with mathematics: Math Doesn't Suck, Kiss My Math, Hot X: Algebra Exposed, Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape, which encourage middle-school and high-school girls to have confidence and succeed in mathematics, Goodnight, Numbers, and Do Not Open This Math Book.

Her acting career, in brief:

She played Winnie Cooper in the television series The Wonder Years from 1988–1993, and since 2010 has voiced Miss Martian in the animated superhero series Young Justice.

In 2015, McKellar was cast in the Netflix original series Project Mc2. She appears in several television films for Hallmark Channel. She is the current voice of Judy Jetson from The Jetsons since 2017 following Janet Waldo's death in 2016.

Answer 7

Glen E. Bredon is the author of the programs DOS.MASTER for Apple II computers, Merlin (a macro assembler) and ProSel for Apple machines. He was the professor of mathematics at Berkley and IAS and author of worthwhile math books like

Bredon, Glen E., Topology and geometry., Graduate Texts in Mathematics. 139. Berlin: Springer. xiv, 557 p. (1997). ZBL0934.55001.

and

Bredon, Glen E., Introduction to compact transformation groups, Pure and Applied Mathematics, 46. New York-London: Academic Press. XIII,459 p. $ 21.00 (1972). ZBL0246.57017.

Answer 8

Not so prominent I think but I'd like to mention that the MathTime Professional 2 (MTPro2) fonts were designed by Michael Spivak of Publish or Perish Inc., see here.

Answer 9

It has been noted already that Noam Elkies is an accomplished composer.

What I find at least as extraordinary about him is that he can hum-whistle some of Bach's two-part inventions. (Anecdotal "evidence", will remove this answer if it is false.)

Answer 10

Marcel-Paul Schuetzenberger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel-Paul_Sch%C3%BCtzenberger) is also an interesting example (he started as a physician).

Answer 11

Andrew Blumberg, in addition to being an accomplished homotopy theorist, a full professor at UT Austin, and having published more than 60 papers, also works on issues related to geolocation data and privacy. For example, he worked on an amicus brief for a Supreme Court case.

Answer 12

I learned this answer from another thread where the OP said it didn't quite fit.

Frank Garside did important work in the 1960s related to braid groups. He also invented what is now known as the Garside element, leading to Garside groups. Later, he was the mayor of Oxford.

In a related vein, George Reid was an algebraist who was later mayor of Cambridge in 1990-91.

Answer 13

Here is some mathematical work by someone better known for other work.

Answer 14

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973 – after 1050) was an Iranian polymath, physicist, astronomer, natural sciences, historian, chronologist and linguist. One of the best his achievements is a method proposed and used by him to estimate the radius and circumference of the Earth almost 1000 years ago.

He was also inventor of minutes and seconds of time.

Answer 15

There is Bertrand Russell, a logician, who had another career as a philosopher as well as an anti-war protestor. He helped publicise what was happening in Vietnam - in fact, according to Paul McCartney of the Beatles, at one point he lived on the same square or street with Russell and he had knocked on his door to introduce himself and Russell proceeded to tell him all about the war. This is, according to Paul McCartney, how the Beatles became involved in the anti-war protest movement, in particularly against the war of aggression by the USA on Vietnam.

Laurent Schwartz, a french mathematician known for his work was on distributions, was also an anti-war activist and who focused on labour activism as well on the colonial war in Algeria.

Grothendieck, who needs no introduction, was also an ati-war activist, focusing on what was then occuring Vietnam. His fater was a revolutionary socialist.

Smale was also another anti-war activist; also Solzhenitsyn and many others.

Sofia Kovalevskaya was one of the first handful of female mathematicians. She was also a writer, having written a well-received autobiography, A Russian Childhood in where she reveals she met Dostoyevsky as a young woman and did not think much of him.

Likewise, Lewis Carroll, also a logician and who wrote the best-selling Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Also Abdus Salam, who was a mathematical physicist and had a second career setting up the Triest Centre of Mathematical Physics to help te Third World get on to its feet.

And a special mention for Walter Sisulu, who studied a science degree, but after joining the ANC, was imprisoned several times, and was finally imprisoned on Robbens Island with Nelson Mandela and sentenced to twenty-five years - the same sentence as Nelson. He rose to become the ANC's Secretary-General and Deputy President of the organisation.

Answer 16

Stan Wagon, whose work was featured in several Mathoverflow posts (e.g. an unexpected image, Gaussian prime spirals), has also an entry in Ripley's Believe It or Not due to his Square Wheel Bike.

Answer 17

Charles Kalme, a mathematician (Contributions to the Theory of Discontinuous Groups of Mobius Transformations, Ph.D. thesis, NYU, 1967) and pioneering chess programmer. His achievements as a chessplayer include winning the United States Junior Championship and playing twice in the United States Chess Championship. He was also a master of contract bridge.

Answer 18

I think, John F. Nash fits in this category, because of 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (I am not aware the details of his work, I just know this because of "A beautiful mind" movie!)

Answer 19

Although it is difficult to say exactly what Thales accomplished, if you take what he's given credit for it is immense. By your criteria he would qualify as an answer.

Although he lacked the rigor of proof, he was the first mathematician we attribute a mathematical result to - namely Thales' Theorem used to get the distances of ships at sea.

He was also the first philosopher. With his contention that everything is water we have the first theory that says everything is one.

Also with his contention that everything is water we have a testable claim. This makes him the first scientist.

He also was an astronomer, predicting the eclipse of May 28th, 585 BC.

He even dabbled in business, by legend. There is a famous story attributed to Aristotle, and others, about him. If true, Thales predicted the weather and foresaw a good olive harvest for the coming year. He then bought all the olive presses at a discount, and rented them out during the harvest. This would be the first recorded use of futures to turn a profit.

Legend has it that Thales was an engineer.

Answer 20

Albert Einstein's contribution to differential geometry was significant. One could mention also Einstein's tensor notation.

On the other hand, Einstein was an inventor, he had several inventions (patents) to his credit.

Answer 21

Professionally, Pierre de Fermat was a lawyer; he had also contributed to physics.

Henry Poincare, Solomon Lefschetz, and Raoul Boot were into engineering when they were young.

Hugo Steinhaus was serious about applications, e.g. about the different feet shapes in order to help shoe designers. The famous Steinhaus slogan was

                    A mathematician will do it better.

In particular, Steinhaus patented longimeter.

Karol Borsuk invented a successful game during WWII, and it helped him to survive in those hardship years.

Stan (Stanisław) Ulam was the main inventor of the H bomb. He has also invented cellular automata.

Israel Gelfand at his mature stage turned his interests toward biology and medicine.

Rene Thom in his later years became seriously interested in too many things to mention here.

Several American mathematicians, including John Milnor, worked on DOD contracts.

Topologist James Munkres made a significant contribution to the assignment problem -- it's even called Munkres assignment algorithm or Kuhn–Munkres algorithm.

A parallel processor invented by a mathematician in the US, and the technology that followed, had an impact on the fall of communism.

Greg Kuperberg was an early pioneer in the field of computer games when he was in his teens; this helped him to pay his tuition at MIT.

Answer 22

I see nobody mentioned about John Forbes Nash, who obtained Nobel prize in Economic science for his contribution to economy. Further German Mathematician Carl Fredric Gauss, Von Neumann etc both were not only prominent mathematicians but also prominent physicist as well.