1985ean Parisko École Normale Superieureko matematikako zuzendari eta irakasle hautatu zuten. Urte berean, Londresko Errege Elkarteko kide izendatu zuten. Emmanuel Collegeko kide izateaz gainera, Cambridgeko Matematikako Sadleiriar katedra ere lortu zuen. 1991n Cambridgeko Matematika Huts eta Estatistika Matematikako saileko zuzendari izendatu zuten.
Wikipedia lists 395 number theorists, from Euclid and Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī to Jacob Tsimerman, but I am not on the list. Actually, one should consider not one list but all the lists of number theorists, in languages from العربية to 中文, but I am not on any of the lists.
Some of the lists are easy to remember; for example, the Kazakhs only recognize Diophantus, Hadamard, Gauss, and Fibonacci (in alphabetical order: Д, Ж, К, Ф); the Icelandic page only lists Dirichlet. I wonder whether John Coates knows that he is the only number theorist not born in the 18th or 19th century, and only one of five number theorists of any time or place, to have a Wikipedia page in Basque, excerpted above; I will surely ask him the next time I see him.
I like to point out Wikipedia’s frequent errors, omissions, and oddities; it reinforces my possibly naive hope that there is a future for professional scholarship. When I start writing anything I inevitably consult Wikipedia for source material, and I sometimes use “Wikipedia” as a stand-in for wired public opinion; but I never quote it as a reliable reference, because too often it is not. On this occasion I was looking for a list of number theorists — it should be easier to get that right than a list of autobiographies — because I had just come across an exchange on the n-Category Café in which Harvey Friedman took part, and in which Peano arithmetic was mentioned and I was wondering how many number theorists on the list would be able to recite the Peano postulates, and what that said about the state of our subject. Surely Eratosthenes and John Coates’s four companions on the Basque page are exempt, but are contemporary number theorists really entitled to their places on the list? To be continued…
Comments 0