A plan/frame work to be a mathematician

[Useful nucleus]

Someone in this forum kindly posted the link:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#bottom

in which Gerard 't Hooft (nobel prize in physics) describes o be come a good theoretical physicist . Can somebody suggest or provide a link to an analogous plane but to be a pure mathematician?

 

[Tiger99]

This is helpful though not quite the same:

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/

I think the website by Gerard 't Hooft is pretty special so I'd be surprised if there's one for maths.

 

[mathwonk]

In my humble opinion, that website is mainly for crackpots. That man may be a nobel prize winner, but i doubt if that site has any value whatsoever to anyone wishing to become one as well.

Although I am a humble ordinary mathematician, the kind mr hooft may disdain, I suggest that I have already done for you a good bit of what you ask, in my site here "who wants to be a mathemtician".

If you are very advanced I admit I have not given you much guidance on how to go further, but that list of topics on hoofts website is an absurd guide to becoming a nobel prize winner or anything else.

indeed it is hard for me to believe any self respecting intelligent scientist created that site. maybe his teenage son did it as a joke.

if you think that website is a model for instructing young geniuses i feel sorry for you. that site is for list makers, not brilliant discoverers.

really.

the site by terry tao suggested here however is genuinely useful.

 

[Useful nucleus]

mathwonk,

The thread you started "Who wants to be a mathematician" is really useful. I don't know how I didn't notice it before! Thank you for it!

Regarding Hooft's page, you don't have to feel sorry for me!
This page is not supposed to be a model to instruct anybody. The main purpose of this page is to tell young physicits what aspects of physics they should learn and what are some of the good refernces for these branches of physics.
I think a Nobel prize physicist opinion about good refrences, textbooks and the essential knowledge that one should learn really adds something. I can't see how you see this subtract something!

Anyways this my opinion you may like it or not and I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematician , I'm still a graduate student in an engineering departmanet who wants to expand his knowledge on his own.

 

[mathwonk]

im just saying it is silly to make a huge list of topics and say if you want to be a brilliant physicist start by learning everything on that list. that's ridiculous.

i also used to make such lists when i was a young man, but they are still silly. at a certain age we make these lists because we can see all the things we wish we knew and would like to have known if we had everything to do over.

thats just not the way to start a scientific career, except for an automaton, in my humble non nobel opinion. in fact as i said it is hard to believe that site is serious.but keep in mind i write these goofy opinions late at night and after grading tests or having the flu.

my site is also loaded with lists of books but i have not read most of them. i tend to agree with gurdjieff, who said something like: " if a man can even make a good cup of coffee you can already talk to him. or henry hay, who said, if you can do one trick well, you are a magician.

i.e. don't try to learn everything, just start by learning one thing well.

 

[mathwonk]

Here is a highly recommended article by michael atiyah on how to become a research mathematician.

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/gowers/gowers_VIII_6.pdf