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

4 votes

Did Cauchy think that uniform and pointwise convergence were equivalent?

I recommend the reading of a wonderful 15-page text of Imre Lakatos, "Another case study of the method of proofs and refutations", which discuss precisely what Cauchy knew and didn't know and did and …
Joël's user avatar
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20 votes

Do mathematical objects disappear?

Hopefully at some point, GRH will be proved, and then the Siegel zeros of Zeta functions will disappear. There are currently thousands of papers on them.
11 votes

Fermat's opponents

The point (5) is at most doubtful. It was made by Mahoney in his book on Fermat, but Mahoney's interpretation of what Digby writes to Wallis does not correspond to what Digby actually writes, as quote …
Joël's user avatar
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16 votes

Theorems first published in textbooks?

Jean-Pierre Serre had a lot of original theorems (some due to him and some due to John Tate) published originally in textbooks. To give two examples, his book "Cohomologie Galoisienne" ("Galois cohomo …
3 votes

Major mathematical advances past age fifty

Uncle Petros proved Goldbach's conjecture just minutes before his death, when he was more than sixty.
59 votes

The most outrageous (or ridiculous) conjectures in mathematics

I propose Edward Nelson's "conjecture" that Peano's arithmetic is inconsistent. First, to be honest, I am not aware that he stated it as "conjecture", using that word, but this is something he said …
10 votes
Accepted

Le Haut Commissariat qui surveille rigoureusement l'alignement de ses Grandes Pyramides

I disagree with Michael Grünewald's interpretation, which by the way doesn't answer the initial question: who Godement is he referring too? I think this is a joke made without acrimony. "Thought polic …
Joël's user avatar
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27 votes
Accepted

Deligne Weil II

To complete Carlo's answer, I think that one thing that can explain the long gap (in addition of the amount of difficult material in Weil II) is that Deligne felt the need to consolidate his result of …
Joël's user avatar
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14 votes

Ramanujan's tau function

All questions of the form 'Why was such a mathematician interested in such a subject?' are difficult, and have a tendency to become metaphysical ('why are we doing mathematics in general?", and then " …
Joël's user avatar
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42 votes

Was the early calculus inconsistent?

The question is not precise enough to get a definite answer, but not for the reason most people say in commentaries. The problem does not lie in the ambiguous meaning of "consistent" (which just means …
Joël's user avatar
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20 votes

Was Cauchy prescient?

After having read Katz' article, I must say I am not convinced and find that the standard interpretation, namely that of Cauchy making a mistake in 1821 and failing to acknowledging it or correcting i …
8 votes

Mathematicians who made important contributions outside their own field?

Grassmann made his most important contribution in Linguistics. Poincaré, besides his enormous work in mathematic, also add very important contribution to physics, and his work in philosophy of scienc …
47 votes

Mathematicians whose works were criticized by contemporaries but became widely accepted later

This is not an answer but a longish comment, which moreover is certainly "subjective and argumentative". Reading all the stories given in the 12 answers, I find I can classify them in three categories …
8 votes

History of the abstract method in mathematics

The question is interesting, but presupposes that we understand and accept Amir's conclusion, namely that "we owe Definition by abstraction (taking equivalence classes as new objects) to the the abstr …
Joël's user avatar
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6 votes

Approachable French masters

Roger Godement. His courses (in analysis, differential geometry, algebra, etc.) are magnificient.

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