Timeline for Which mathematicians have influenced you the most?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 20, 2010 at 17:51 | comment | added | Neel Krishnaswami | In a probability class I took from him, the exams he set were very easy, just tests of basic computational skill. But his homeworks were fantastically difficult and creative, and he encouraged us to work together on them. For all but the very best students, this was a neccessity! The devious thing is that this didn't just teach us probability, but also how to collaborate mathematically. | |
| Jul 5, 2010 at 1:58 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | I took Differential Equations from Rota at MIT in the early 1980s. He was a fantastic lecturer. I remember two things: he used to make fun of the people taking notes in class and would enunciate punctuation aloud. The other thing I remember is that he used to like to lecture while drinking a coke. Every day some student would buy a can of coke from the vending machines outside the lecture room and leave it on the table in front of the blackboard. The last day of the lecture EVERYONE bought him a can of coke. There were literally more than 100 cans of coke on the table that day. | |
| May 30, 2010 at 5:24 | comment | added | Burhan | Rota died before I was an undergrad at MIT but I remember attending a lecture by one of his philosophy student who recounted some colorful anecdotes about his former professor's quarrels with the folks at "Course 24". However I am coming to realize that my own philosophy background is actually helping my mathematics, particularly in the "theory-building" Grothendieck-style part of mathematical research. | |
| Nov 17, 2009 at 2:56 | comment | added | Harrison Brown | @Qiaochu: I was wondering when you were going to show up to second this one... :) | |
| Nov 16, 2009 at 20:39 | comment | added | Andy Putman | When I was an undergraduate, Rota's paper "The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics upon Philosophy" completely changed my thinking about analytic philosophy. As a result, I did not complete a second major in philosophy that I had almost completed at that point. This wonderful paper is available here : springerlink.com/content/r29435u7722u58j2 | |
| Nov 16, 2009 at 17:16 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | I agree so much I'm commenting. | |
| Nov 16, 2009 at 17:09 | history | edited | Jose Brox | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
Added bold font
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| Nov 16, 2009 at 0:42 | history | edited | Erik Davis | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
(thanks Jose)
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| Nov 16, 2009 at 0:28 | comment | added | Jose Brox | I think you mean the paper "The Number of Partitions of a Set", published in The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 71, No. 5 (May, 1964), pp. 498-504. | |
| Nov 15, 2009 at 19:06 | history | answered | Erik Davis | CC BY-SA 2.5 |