or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
May 27, 2008
The Conscience of a Mathematician
By: Bernard Chazelle
David Mumford is one of the giants of 20th century mathematics. He has made fundamental contributions to algebraic geometry.
What's that? If you don't care, please skip this paragraph. A field is a bunch of "numbers" you can add, subtract, multiply, divide. It can be finite or infinite. The natural numbers do not form a field (because 2 divided by 3 is not a natural number) but the rationals do (because 2 divided by 3 is a rational; more generally, if you divide any two nonzero rationals you get another rational). If you consider a bunch of linear equations in many variables, any question you can ask (like how many solutions does it have over a certain field?) has an easy answer. If you consider one polynomial equation in one variable, then any question you can ask over a field has an easy answer. But if you now combine both objects and consider a bunch of polynomial equations in many variables, then all hell breaks loose. It becomes very hard to answer the simplest questions. That's algebraic geometry. It's without a doubt the most difficult area of mathematics to get into.
David Mumford has won just about every prize in math. This year he got the highly prestigious Wolf prize.
The American mathematician David Mumford, co-winner of the 2008 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics, announced upon receiving the award yesterday that he will donate the money to Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, and to Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement.
David goes on to explain what research in academics is all about.
"The achievements I accomplished in mathematics were made possible thanks to my being able to move freely and exchange ideas with other scholars," he said. "It would not have been possible without an international consensus on an exchange of ideas. Mathematics works best when people can move and get together. That's its elixir of life. But the people of occupied Palestine don't have an opportunity to do that. The school system is fighting for its life, and mobility is very limited."
There is a long tradition of political activism and social consciousness in mathematics, from Evariste Galois to Bertrand Russell to Laurent Schwartz to Stephen Smale to Bill Thurston, etc. I wish I could say the same about computer scientists, but their political consciousness tends to begin and end with Open Source...
I'll have more to say about the Palestinian conflict. Stay tuned.
— Bernard Chazelle
Posted at May 27, 2008 06:32 PMHere's some irrational numbers---If 10 dollars out of YOUR pocket pays for a Palestinian to kill an Israeli, and if 10 dollars out of YOUR pocket pays for an Israeli to kill a Palestinian then how many dollars out of YOUR pocket will it take to create a cease fire and STOP the killing.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at May 27, 2008 08:08 PMBernard, thanks for this. Chomsky has observed that it makes sense that a large number of the most effective political voices in both the Soviet Union and here have been scientists. At least in the hard sciences, reality has to be the ultimate arbiter for people's accomplishments (which in turn can give the accomplished the security and stature to change things). By contrast, journalists, historians, etc., are punished for uncovering reality.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at May 27, 2008 09:21 PMDamn, another reason to admire the guy?
Posted by: StO at May 27, 2008 09:41 PM
open source will seem more a compelling political idea to mathematicians when US law allows their universities to copyright their theorems, and to sue those who use or reproduce those theorems without paying licensing fees.
never happen, you say?
that's what computer scientists used to say about algorithms.
Jon, thanks for the comment. It explains perfectly a curious observation I made some time ago that I didn't understand. Several of my favorite social critics trained as engineers or scientists - most prominently Kurt Vonnegut and Barbara Ehrenreich. Ted Rall also. On a personal level, I am fascinated by this.
Posted by: Aaron Datesman at May 28, 2008 08:27 AMYou shouldn't forget von Neumann or Teller, whose social consciences ran rather differently. Chevalley too....
A gaping hole in your list is Grothendieck.
Posted by: StO at May 28, 2008 02:20 PMStO: I heard Grothendieck once say that the most important thing he'd ever learned in his life was how to grow tomatoes. He regretted having wasted his life proving useless theorems when, instead, he could have been growing tomatoes.
I heard Grothendieck once say that the most important thing he'd ever learned in his life was how to grow tomatoes.
You mean you've read that he said that, or you actually heard him say that in person? Because if the latter...that's pretty snazzy.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at May 28, 2008 05:00 PMHeard and watched him say that, live!
He quit IHÉS over the military funding and taught category theory in Hanoi while it was being bombed as a form of protest, didn't he? Alas, I was too young to attend.
Posted by: Save the Oocytes at May 28, 2008 06:05 PMI didn't know about the Hanoi thing. Wow.
Yes he quit IHES for these reasons. Funny because it had been founded for him. Just like IAS was founded for Einstein.
Hey, this computer scientist is plenty political.
Posted by: JPL at May 29, 2008 05:14 AMA little unfair to CompScis, I think. There's a split in the open-source world, broadly speaking represented by the views of Richard Stallman (who invented one of the first open source licenses) and Eric S. Raymond(*). The former is freedom oriented, that is they see open source as a way of ensuring the best system is always publicly available, the latter practicality oriented, seeing open source as but one method of software development that happens to work well. The two views somewhat correlate with technological utopian leftist and liberal views and with "free market" rightism and technological utopian libertarian views.
Another thing is that CompScis tend to be interested in the correct operation of systems, including e.g. the systems of government, but 1) they have a sufficient number of systems to consider that will easily occupy all their time without benefitting their thought in other areas
2) they don't tend to take an abstract view as a matter of course, only when necessary. IMO, most are engineers and a few are mathematicians, psychologists, physicists, etc, who happen to work with computers. There's nothing wrong with being an engineer, but it does mean a focus on practical rather than elegant solutions, even if one has a fondness for them.
3)They've often been persuaded that a rational approach to government cannot work. This is reenforced by the decisions enforced upon them because of "politics", i.e. decisions within the organization in which they work which seem irrational to them. These ideas are similar to the "isn't government crazy?" ideas pushed by conservatives as a matter of course.
(*) who wrote "How to ask questions the smart way" http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html which is a good thing to read if wanting to approach a group with specialist knowledge of any kind, IMO.
Posted by: me at May 29, 2008 06:18 AM
