Re: What Is a Mathematician?

Narasimham wrote:
On Apr 20, 8:34 pm, David Bernier <david...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A N Niel wrote:
The harder case is people who give it all up. I know a couple
of mathematicians who got M.D.s and don't (as far as I know)
read or write theorems any more; one of them (a psychiatrist
who did a Ph.D. in topology, and had a prestigious named
instructorship in mathematics before going to medical school)
has told me that psychiatry is what cured him of mathematics.
I guess he's not a mathematician on his own account, but what
of other such, from whom we have no such testimony? What--if
it comes to that--about Grothendieck?
Lee Rudolph
Remember Pascal. He gave up mathematics. Then one day he got a
toothache and he was a mathematician again for a few hours.
Or Ramanujan. I wonder what went through Hardy's mind as he read
through the letters from India...

may be: ''How does Ramanujan jump this far without the needed
intermediate proofs?'

According to the article on Ramanujan at the web page below,
his first letter to Hardy had statements of results but
no proofs.

From the well known web site with biographies of mathematicians,
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Ramanujan.html :


``Hardy, together with Littlewood, studied the
long list of unproved theorems which Ramanujan
enclosed with his letter."

Hardy replied and said in part that before he could judge
properly the value of the work, it was essential that
Hardy have proofs of at least some of the results.

I also had a look at the web page:

http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/Ramanujan.HTM

David Bernier

.

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