- #36
matt grime
Science Advisor
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So your notion of what a mathematician is differs markedly from some other people's then. LIke I keep saying if I were to label I would label Bohr a physicist. That doesn't a priori exclude him from having made a contribution to mathematics.
Here is a mathematical object:
[tex]\phi(n)[/tex]
a function from N to N, that gives the number of numbers comprime with n between 1 and n. It is called Euler's totient function. Euler was a prolific mathematician and physicist.
Gauss also invented physical theories in astronomy I believe, though don't quote me. The origins of homological algebra lie in studying planetary motion. (hence the apparently disparate meanings of syzygy)
Ah, Dirac, that'd be the dirac who was from Bristol, where I work, as a mathematician, whose portrait hangs in my department? A department which, in a recent report, said that it wished to remove the artificial barriers between the applied and pure world, a department where applied mathematicians study the Riemann hypothesis? Where the applied colloquium two weeks ago was on L-functions and modular forms and where Paul Martin gave a talk aobut statisical mechanics in the pure seminar?
The original point was that although there is no Nobel prize for mathematics, there are prizes won by people who's work has had a strong influence on and been strongly influenced by mathematics, that is all.
The divisions are completely subjective as I believe we have shown here.
jon baez isn't a member of the physics department at UCR, atiyah has contributed abel winning theorems to mathematics that have uses in physics (and last i knew was studying electron distributions), grothendieck is now allegedly studying biology, soem famous category theorist/geometer whose name eludes me isn ow doing computer science, bott was an electrical engineer and mathematician.
The differences are sometimes marked, sometimes fuzzy, but it is all completely subjective, isn't it?
Here is a mathematical object:
[tex]\phi(n)[/tex]
a function from N to N, that gives the number of numbers comprime with n between 1 and n. It is called Euler's totient function. Euler was a prolific mathematician and physicist.
Gauss also invented physical theories in astronomy I believe, though don't quote me. The origins of homological algebra lie in studying planetary motion. (hence the apparently disparate meanings of syzygy)
Ah, Dirac, that'd be the dirac who was from Bristol, where I work, as a mathematician, whose portrait hangs in my department? A department which, in a recent report, said that it wished to remove the artificial barriers between the applied and pure world, a department where applied mathematicians study the Riemann hypothesis? Where the applied colloquium two weeks ago was on L-functions and modular forms and where Paul Martin gave a talk aobut statisical mechanics in the pure seminar?
The original point was that although there is no Nobel prize for mathematics, there are prizes won by people who's work has had a strong influence on and been strongly influenced by mathematics, that is all.
The divisions are completely subjective as I believe we have shown here.
jon baez isn't a member of the physics department at UCR, atiyah has contributed abel winning theorems to mathematics that have uses in physics (and last i knew was studying electron distributions), grothendieck is now allegedly studying biology, soem famous category theorist/geometer whose name eludes me isn ow doing computer science, bott was an electrical engineer and mathematician.
The differences are sometimes marked, sometimes fuzzy, but it is all completely subjective, isn't it?