6 ms·

Three Mathematicians We Lost in 2020

220 points by _pius 6y ago

guruparan18 6y ago
John Conway loss will live in my memory for sometime, just like loosing John Nash on a car accident. Their contribution to math will outlive everything else.
- solstice 6y ago
  Wear your seat belts, people...
  - corpMaverick 6y ago
    ... even in a Taxi cab.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/vu4op https://archive.is/vu4op
xenocratus 6y ago
Terence Tao wrote a great obituary for Conway last year: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/john-conway/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/john-conway/ "Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP" also does obituaries of mathematicians quite often, and goes more into detail on their work. https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/john-horton-conway-1937-2020/ https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/john-horton-conway...
- gmfawcett 6y ago
  Tao: "Conway was arguably an extreme point in the convex hull of all mathematicians." What a beautiful and mathy way to describe him.
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  I didn't know about FRACTRAN, that's pretty cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN
  - prezjordan 6y ago
    One of my favorite facts about FRACTRAN that's often missing from articles around it [0] > And it follows that FRACTRAN games are undecidable. This doesn’t speak directly to the Collatz conjecture, because (1/2)n | 3n + 1 is not a FRACTRAN game. But it does follow that arbitrary Collatz games are undecidable, since the set of all Collatz games includes the set of all FRACTRAN games. [0] https://raganwald.com/2020/05/03/fractran.html#why-fractran-really-matters https://raganwald.com/2020/05/03/fractran.html#why-fractran-...
1970-01-01 6y ago
Vaughan Jones, winner of the 1990 Fields Medal, also lost to 2020.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Boris Tsirelson
- auntienomen 6y ago
  Vaughan was a fucking mensch. I doubt the world realizes how much worse it is without him.
- tobmlt 6y ago
  My first thought was: “at least it’s not the Jones polynomial guy”... oh. Damn it. I know him from “gauge fields, knots and gravity” and the expanding popularity of low dimensional topology generally.
- kkylin 6y ago
  Terry Tao on Vaughan Jones: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/vaughan-jones/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/vaughan-jones/
tombert 6y ago
I'm still sad about Conway. He was on my list of people that I was hoping to meet some day.
- trainfg 6y ago
  the same too. RIP Conway.
pgtan 6y ago
Surprisingly for me, the passing of John D. Barrow went so unresonated. He has some great books about the idea of the mathematical universe and his lectures (on YT) are quite interesting.
- jostylr 6y ago
  His book Pi in the Sky was one of the two most influential math books for me in my youth; the other was Modern Mathematics by Edna Kramer. I had not heard of his death. Thanks for posting about it.
- pjbk 6y ago
  We lost a bunch of excellent scientists, teachers and human beings overall, known and less known. Besides Barrow, it was personally painful to learn that Malcolm J. Skove also passed away last June. He co-authored one of the best introductory physics textbooks that I have read, "Physics: Classical and Modern".
sexyhexy 6y ago
This is the saddest loss of all time
xamuel 6y ago
Conway is often remembered for his Game of Life, but IMHO that is trivia in comparison with his surreal number system [1]. I predict that while surreal numbers today are an under-appreciated toy, in coming centuries they will gradually become more and more important, eventually surpassing even what we currently call real numbers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number
- thesteamboat 6y ago
  This seems a strange prediction to me. Can you elaborate on why you think this? Do you think the reals will be replaced by surreals in common usage by laypeople, by working mathematicians or in mathematical pedagogy? While I certainly think surreal numbers are really nifty for tying together different number systems into one rigorous foundation, your claim sounds like someone saying that the algebraic numbers would surpass the rational numbers.
  - DylanDmitri 6y ago
    *speculation warning* We're still not comfortable checking if rationals are equal in any major language... there's a long way to go. I could see a future high-level programming language (think Python design goals) using the rigorous foundation of surreals as the underlying numeric system. Sure 95% of the time it'll look the same to the programmer, and the performance will be worse, but you get inherent stability around infinities, irrationals, NaNs, floating-point comparisons, etc It's reasonable to think that ~200 years from now, highschoolers will learn that numbers are all "really" from this structure of surreal numbers, and that most computers and physics processing etc uses them behind the scenes.
    - xamuel 6y ago
      Yes, it's instructive to recall that the Pythagorean Cult believed all numbers were rational (and this was a religious sort of belief). There's a legend (albeit probably not historically accurate) that when a member of the cult proved that sqrt(2) was irrational, they put him to death... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus
stereoabuse 6y ago
I recommend Dyson's Maker of Patterns[0] autobiography told primarily through his letters to his family throughout his life. Includes great stories about Feynman, Oppenheimer, other heavy-hitters of mid-century physics. The format was surprisingly narrative, makes me wish I wrote as many personal longer-form letters with family and friends. Also Siobhan Roberts' biography of Conway, Genius at Play[1], told another great story. Low on math content but Conway's personality and the narrators attempts to corral it were quick fun. Both are recommended. Does anyone have recommendation for a popular-science level book on Graham? I'm only familiar with him from the Numberphile video series. [0] https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra... [1] short snippet from it https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway
schoen 6y ago
One of the puzzles I wrote for the EFF30 puzzlehunt was dedicated to the memory of Conway and Guy (for reasons that should be pretty apparent if you solve it). https://eff30.cat/ctf/largest/ https://eff30.cat/ctf/largest/ All three of the Winning Ways authors died within the past two years. :-(
hn_asker 6y ago
I saw Graham walking around UCSD. I didn't recognize him but my friend pointed him out. I wanted to meet him.
ignoranceprior 6y ago
Richard K. Guy also died in 2020. He coauthored Winning Ways on combinatorial game theory and had some notable contributions to number theory.
utopcell 6y ago
I remember reading one of Ron Graham's early papers on scheduling [1] when I was a grad and thinking to myself: I'll never have the mental clarity to achieve what this guy has done. What a mind. His wife shares [2]: ``On the wall in Ron's office, he hung a poster of squares arranged in 90 lines each consisting of 52 little squares. Later on he modified it so it contains 100 lines. (He sometimes joked that his grandma lived to 99 and then hit by a truck.) The rule is to fill one square each week. Thus, one can see how many squares are left and how finite and precious life is. He only used 84 lines but every square was gloriously filled.'' [1] http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~ronspubs/72_04_two_processors.pdf http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~ronspubs/72_04_two_processors.pdf [2] http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/ron/kayak.html http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/ron/kayak.html

220 points by _pius 6y ago

John Conway loss will live in my memory for sometime, just like loosing John Nash on a car accident. Their contribution to math will outlive everything else.

solstice 6y ago
Wear your seat belts, people...
- corpMaverick 6y ago
  ... even in a Taxi cab.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/vu4op https://archive.is/vu4op

xenocratus 6y ago

Terence Tao wrote a great obituary for Conway last year: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/john-conway/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/john-conway/ "Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP" also does obituaries of mathematicians quite often, and goes more into detail on their work. https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/john-horton-conway-1937-2020/ https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/john-horton-conway...

gmfawcett 6y ago
Tao: "Conway was arguably an extreme point in the convex hull of all mathematicians." What a beautiful and mathy way to describe him.
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
I didn't know about FRACTRAN, that's pretty cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN
- prezjordan 6y ago
  One of my favorite facts about FRACTRAN that's often missing from articles around it [0] > And it follows that FRACTRAN games are undecidable. This doesn’t speak directly to the Collatz conjecture, because (1/2)n | 3n + 1 is not a FRACTRAN game. But it does follow that arbitrary Collatz games are undecidable, since the set of all Collatz games includes the set of all FRACTRAN games. [0] https://raganwald.com/2020/05/03/fractran.html#why-fractran-really-matters https://raganwald.com/2020/05/03/fractran.html#why-fractran-...

1970-01-01 6y ago

Vaughan Jones, winner of the 1990 Fields Medal, also lost to 2020.

pfdietz 6y ago
Boris Tsirelson
auntienomen 6y ago
Vaughan was a fucking mensch. I doubt the world realizes how much worse it is without him.
tobmlt 6y ago
My first thought was: “at least it’s not the Jones polynomial guy”... oh. Damn it. I know him from “gauge fields, knots and gravity” and the expanding popularity of low dimensional topology generally.
kkylin 6y ago
Terry Tao on Vaughan Jones: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/vaughan-jones/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/vaughan-jones/

tombert 6y ago

I'm still sad about Conway. He was on my list of people that I was hoping to meet some day.

trainfg 6y ago
the same too. RIP Conway.

pgtan 6y ago

Surprisingly for me, the passing of John D. Barrow went so unresonated. He has some great books about the idea of the mathematical universe and his lectures (on YT) are quite interesting.

jostylr 6y ago
His book Pi in the Sky was one of the two most influential math books for me in my youth; the other was Modern Mathematics by Edna Kramer. I had not heard of his death. Thanks for posting about it.
pjbk 6y ago
We lost a bunch of excellent scientists, teachers and human beings overall, known and less known. Besides Barrow, it was personally painful to learn that Malcolm J. Skove also passed away last June. He co-authored one of the best introductory physics textbooks that I have read, "Physics: Classical and Modern".

sexyhexy 6y ago

This is the saddest loss of all time

xamuel 6y ago

Conway is often remembered for his Game of Life, but IMHO that is trivia in comparison with his surreal number system [1]. I predict that while surreal numbers today are an under-appreciated toy, in coming centuries they will gradually become more and more important, eventually surpassing even what we currently call real numbers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number

thesteamboat 6y ago
This seems a strange prediction to me. Can you elaborate on why you think this? Do you think the reals will be replaced by surreals in common usage by laypeople, by working mathematicians or in mathematical pedagogy? While I certainly think surreal numbers are really nifty for tying together different number systems into one rigorous foundation, your claim sounds like someone saying that the algebraic numbers would surpass the rational numbers.
- DylanDmitri 6y ago
  *speculation warning* We're still not comfortable checking if rationals are equal in any major language... there's a long way to go. I could see a future high-level programming language (think Python design goals) using the rigorous foundation of surreals as the underlying numeric system. Sure 95% of the time it'll look the same to the programmer, and the performance will be worse, but you get inherent stability around infinities, irrationals, NaNs, floating-point comparisons, etc It's reasonable to think that ~200 years from now, highschoolers will learn that numbers are all "really" from this structure of surreal numbers, and that most computers and physics processing etc uses them behind the scenes.
  - xamuel 6y ago
    Yes, it's instructive to recall that the Pythagorean Cult believed all numbers were rational (and this was a religious sort of belief). There's a legend (albeit probably not historically accurate) that when a member of the cult proved that sqrt(2) was irrational, they put him to death... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus

stereoabuse 6y ago

I recommend Dyson's Maker of Patterns[0] autobiography told primarily through his letters to his family throughout his life. Includes great stories about Feynman, Oppenheimer, other heavy-hitters of mid-century physics. The format was surprisingly narrative, makes me wish I wrote as many personal longer-form letters with family and friends. Also Siobhan Roberts' biography of Conway, Genius at Play[1], told another great story. Low on math content but Conway's personality and the narrators attempts to corral it were quick fun. Both are recommended. Does anyone have recommendation for a popular-science level book on Graham? I'm only familiar with him from the Numberphile video series. [0] https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra... [1] short snippet from it https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway

schoen 6y ago

One of the puzzles I wrote for the EFF30 puzzlehunt was dedicated to the memory of Conway and Guy (for reasons that should be pretty apparent if you solve it). https://eff30.cat/ctf/largest/ https://eff30.cat/ctf/largest/ All three of the Winning Ways authors died within the past two years. :-(

hn_asker 6y ago

I saw Graham walking around UCSD. I didn't recognize him but my friend pointed him out. I wanted to meet him.

ignoranceprior 6y ago

Richard K. Guy also died in 2020. He coauthored Winning Ways on combinatorial game theory and had some notable contributions to number theory.

utopcell 6y ago

I remember reading one of Ron Graham's early papers on scheduling [1] when I was a grad and thinking to myself: I'll never have the mental clarity to achieve what this guy has done. What a mind. His wife shares [2]: ``On the wall in Ron's office, he hung a poster of squares arranged in 90 lines each consisting of 52 little squares. Later on he modified it so it contains 100 lines. (He sometimes joked that his grandma lived to 99 and then hit by a truck.) The rule is to fill one square each week. Thus, one can see how many squares are left and how finite and precious life is. He only used 84 lines but every square was gloriously filled.'' [1] http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~ronspubs/72_04_two_processors.pdf http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~ronspubs/72_04_two_processors.pdf [2] http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/ron/kayak.html http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/ron/kayak.html