Re: Consider John Nash, math awards

James Harris wrote:
> Remember John Nash, the subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind"?

A good movie, but only loosely based on facts.  You post shows
you didn't bother to read the book.

> Famous mathematician, now, who gets a major prize as he won a Nobel
> prize, but remember, it was in Economics.

That's because there is no Nobel Prize in math, you moron;
nevertheless, the economics prize is often awarded for
math.

> Out of curiousity I did a search on the Internet to see if he'd won
> any awards from *math* society, and found not one.
>
> I'd be interested to hear if anyone can track down any awards that
> Nash's fellow mathematicians gave him, as I haven't found any, and I
> don't think they've given him any because math society is weird.

Well, if you'd taken the time to read the book, you'd know that
the "math society" was "weird" enough to go to great lengths
to support Nash through decades of mental illness, including
positions and various prizes.

Contrary to the impression of the movie, he actually did
useful work at various lucid points throughout his career,
and probably would have won more awards, but it was generally
felt that he wasn't up to notoriety (would you really want
someone you cared about to get up in front of a group
of reporters and start to talk about being "Emporer of
Antarctica"?).

> Now consider Andrew Wiles, who received *multiple* math awards for
> purportedly proving Fermat's Last Theorem, and he didn't even get what
> used to be *the* big math award--the Field's Medal.

That's because by the time his proof was finalized, he was over
40, which is the cutoff for the Fields' Medal.

> If you've never heard of it, that's ok.  Mathematicians have a society
> that is strangely separate from the rest of the world, which seems to
> follow its own rules, like how it has to my knowledge *still* not
> given John Nash a single award.

He was reportedly a serious contender for the Fields' medal in 1958,
but was beat out late in the deliberations.

I'm trying hard to understand your complaint.  Are you upset that
mathemtical prizes are given to one mathematician over another,
rather than just passed out to all mathematicians?

Or are you upset that they didn't give more medals to
Nash based on the fact that Ron Howard made a movie about him?

> Wiles actually made several hundred thousand dollars just from awards,
> but was too old to get the Field's Medal which is awarded for
> significant work done I think before the age of 35.

It's 40.  Don't you bother to check *any* of your facts.

So in fact, Wiles won a number of mathematical awards, except one
for which he wasn't eligible.  Since it would be extremely hard
to work Fermat's Theorem into an Economics Nobel, basically
Wiles won everything he could hope for.

Do you *have* some sort of point?

> John Nash got an Economics Nobel, which is more presitigious than the
> math awards anyway, but I think it telling that mathematicians,
> snubbed him.

I guess you're trying to make a parallel with yourself here, but
the only think  you have in common with Nash is mental illness.

-E


> James Harris