Everything you wanted to know about….Mathematicians

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. – Rabindranath Tagore

Are Mathematicians Dangerous?

Is mathematics dangerous?

• Can mathematics drive you insane?• Is it okay to…Divide by zero?• Can mathematicians fight terrorism?• What do mathematicians talk about?• Have mathematicians figured out anything use

ful?• Detractors....

Are mathematicians eccentric?

The story of Grisha Perelman

• Grigori (“Grisha”) Yakovlevich Perelman, born 13 June 1966 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) proved Thurston's “geometrization” conjecture, thus affirmating the famous Poincaré conjecture, posed in 1904 and regarded as one of the most important and difficult open problems in mathematics until it was solved.

• In August 2006, Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow". Perelman declined to accept the award or to appear at the congress.

Perelman - Poincare

Colbert - Poincare Wikiality

• Colbert's envy

Sylvia Nassar on Perelman

Other eccentric mathematicians

The death of Archimedes

Wiener and his sausage

• Norbert Wiener was renowned for his absent-mindedness. When he and his family moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be of absolutely no help, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, some insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away in disgust.

• At the end of the day he went home - to the old address in Cambridge, of course. When he got there he realised that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, “Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I’m Norbert Wiener and we’ve just moved. Would you know where we’ve moved to?” To which the young girl replied, “Yes Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget.”

Hilbert

• According to an old tradition at Gottingen University (where the noted mathematician David Hilbert once taught), each new faculty member, dressed in black coat and top hat, would make a brief, formal call on each of the senior professors.

• David Hilbert, famed for his absent-mindedness, was working at home one day when a young man thus dressed knocked upon his door. When Hilbert's wife graciously invited him in, the man sat down, put his top hat on the floor, and struck up a polite conversation.

• Hilbert, perhaps distracted by some profound mathematical problem, listened to the banter with growing impatience. At last, he took the visitor's top hat from the floor, placed it upon his head, took his wife by the arm, said, "My dear, I think we have delayed our good colleague long enough" - and walked out of his own home!

• One day when commercial air travel was still in its infancy, the great mathematician David Hilbert was invited to give a talk on any subject he liked. His chosen subject - "The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem" - came as something of a surprise, particularly given that the famous theorem, as far as anyone knew, remained. Needless to say, the event was eagerly anticipated...

• Soon enough, the momentous day arrived and Hilbert delivered his lecture. While undeniably brilliant, however, it had nothing to do with Fermat's theorem.

• After the talk, Hilbert was asked why he had chosen a title which had nothing to do with his lecture. "Oh," he replied, "that was just in case the plane went down.”

Further evidence of eccentricity...

Are men better at math?

That's right, the women are smarter