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History and philosophy of mathematics, biographies of mathematicians, mathematics education, recreational mathematics, communication of mathematics.

19 votes

Which mathematical ideas have done most to change history?

The idea that new knowledge can be obtained by careful deduction from previous truths has in my opinion had an enormous impact on european history and is certainly not a trivial one. Be it found in th …
16 votes

Biographic Data/Stories about André Néron

According to Colliot (sorry Pete, I missed your warning that you had already asked him), Néron was a very nice person. The fact that he had so few students simply reflect the fact that at the time the …
13 votes

Books/websites which have motivating stories of mathematicians overcoming hardships in life

Alexander Grothendieck was born the son of Russian anarchist Jew in Nazi Germany, was imprisoned in a concentration camp as a young stateless child, had to hide from the Nazis, lived as a miserable te …
13 votes

Ramanujan's tau function

Why not simply looking at the original source? Ramanujan made his famous conjectures in On certain arithmetical functions Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society XXII (1916), a source whi …
Olivier's user avatar
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49 votes
Accepted

History of Geometric Analogies in Number Theory

Treating number and function fields on the same footing or (for instance) the idea that ramification in algebraic number theory and in the theory of covering of Riemann or analytic surfaces are two in …
Olivier's user avatar
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12 votes
2 answers
386 views

Is there something I am missing about the computation of the $p$-part of the class groups of...

Well, the answer of the question in the title in certainly Yes, many things in fact, but let me be more precise. In 1958, Serre gave a Bourbaki talk on the recent works of Iwasawa on class groups in t …
Olivier's user avatar
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5 votes

Is there something I am missing about the computation of the $p$-part of the class groups of...

Recently, I stumbled coincidentally on the paper Computation of invariants in the theory of cyclotomic fields K. Iwasawa and C. Sims J. Math. Soc. Japan Vol.18 (1966) This explains in full details how …
Olivier's user avatar
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26 votes
1 answer
3k views

Are there mistakes in the proof of FLT?

This semester, I teach a graduate course in epistemology of mathematics and as a case study, I assigned students a discussion on the epistemological status of Fermat's Last Theorem according to differ …
Olivier's user avatar
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2 votes

The historical development of automorphic geometry

A common answer to question 1 is to mention the entries of Gauss's diary from 1814, including famously (but not restricted to) the last one, in which he studies some properties of biquadratic reciproc …
Olivier's user avatar
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25 votes

Work of plenary speakers at ICM 2018

Vincent Lafforgue's work span many topics and contain many striking results but the most probable recent work to be described in the spirit of the question is Chtoucas pour les groupes réductifs et pa …
50 votes

Mathematical habits of thought and action which would be of use to non-mathematicians

Keep in mind that it is easy to make mistakes. The most striking thing I learned from doing mathematics is that even in an environment entirely devoid of ambiguities and characterized by precise axiom …
19 votes
1 answer
1k views

Hensel's proof that $e$ is transcendental

When he introduced $p$-adic numbers, Kurt Hensel produced an incorrect local/global proof of the fact that $e$ is transcendental. Apparently, the intended proof goes along the following lines: studyin …
Olivier's user avatar
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17 votes

Most memorable titles

I don't think $\textbf{L'endoscopie tordue n'est pas si tordue}$ (Twisted endoscopy is not so twisted) de J.-L. Waldspurger has been mentioned yet.