posted by
janrinok
on Monday June 23 2014, @09:42PM
from the I-bet-they-had-no-problems-counting-that dept.
from the I-bet-they-had-no-problems-counting-that dept.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which is funded by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and investor Yuri Milner, just doled out five $3 million awards to cutting edge math projects. The Breakthrough Prizes - there have been two previously, for life science and fundamental physics - are designed to raise awareness of math and make it a more compelling career choice for the young. Sure, $15 million will do that, but really anything that makes people stop and think about how crucial math is to the technology that surrounds us is a good thing.
Prizes awarded to:
- Simon Donaldson, Stony Brook University and Imperial College London, for the new revolutionary invariants of 4-dimensional manifolds and for the study of the relation between stability in algebraic geometry and in global differential geometry, both for bundles and for Fano varieties.
- Maxim Kontsevich, Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, for work making a deep impact in a vast variety of mathematical disciplines, including algebraic geometry, deformation theory, symplectic topology, homological algebra and dynamical systems.
- Jacob Lurie, Harvard University, for his work on the foundations of higher category theory and derived algebraic geometry; for the classification of fully extended topological quantum field theories; and for providing a moduli-theoretic interpretation of elliptic cohomology.
- Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles, for numerous breakthrough contributions to harmonic analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations and analytic number theory.
- Richard Taylor, Institute for Advanced Study, for numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the Taniyama-Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and the Sato-Tate conjecture.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Silicon Valley Giants Just Handed Out $15 M in Prizes to Mathematicians
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 7 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 23 2014, @11:34PM
Someone care to explain what these things are and their possible application? sounds interesting.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MickLinux on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:40AM
Well the dollars aren't really dollars; they're usually a check that is deposited to one's bank account. The application of these things is wide-ranging and extremely useful in quite a range of subjects. It isn't just ivory tower stuff either. I've known truckers and plumbers who would declare that if they suddenly had access to fifteen million dollars, they knew what they'd do with it. Sometimes, it means that they can get a new plumbing truck. For Farmers, it usually means they can keep farming for a few more years. The only real field where there might be questionable applicability might be medical insurance, but that's just a question of scale, because fifteen million might be lost in the normal minute-by minute ebb and flow.
I hope this was helpful. Although IANAM, I have actually held a twenty dollar bill in my hands for a short time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:01AM
Hey, I can add! Where is my money?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by MickLinux on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:01AM
Okay, so as not to be mean, here's what I understand of this: Take the Joukowsky transform. The transform can be used to define the surface of an airfoil, and calculations can be done either in the polar form or the cartesian form, because the calculus is valid across both forms, as long as you don't get into spiraling behavior.
So a variant topology over which calculus applies, is a manifold. These mathematicians deal with different manifolds.
Now, the joukowski airfoil is a bad example, because it is such a limited case. Howevere, aeronautic engineers discovered that the vortex is a manifold, and by summing together 2-D vortexes (which I am GUESSING might be syplectic?) you can approximate any shape for inviscin , incompressible flow. With that information, you can get good approximations for the same shapes in viscid, compressible flow. (see, for example Schetz, JA on the subject).
So these mathematicians are busy thinking about manifolds -- oh, here's another one... I'll bet Greene's Theorem comes out of manifold linear algebra -- and considering how such things might apply to , for example, the problem of identifying unique knots. Or maybe figuring out how to take a walk over the bridges of Kaliningrad (konigsberg). Or how to prove the existance and uniquesness of the Parker/Sochacki solution to the Picard Iteration, which can help you solve initial-value systems of differential equations by hand.
Or maybe they're using it to solve another aspect of the n-body problem, especiallyeas regards the interplanetary highways.
I just thought it was very interesting that they were almost all awarded in linear algebra. It sounds like the NSA or someone has a tough cookie to crack.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:00AM
Wonder whether such prizes have a negative or positive effect.
My guess is they don't have that much negative effect due to the time scale involved - people aren't rushing[1] - you don't win one this year, you could win one 5 years later.
As for positive effect we could ask the winners whether they even knew of the prize and were aiming to win it :).
It might cause more people to get into math. But more people entering for the sake of $$$$$$$ does not necessarily improve the rate of progress or increase the number of breakthroughs.
[1] If people were rushing it might have a negative effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_problem#Glucksberg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:43PM
I know some of these words
(Score: 1) by Freebirth Toad on Wednesday June 25 2014, @03:08AM
These prizes are just awarding the people who have already done amazing work. They were going to do amazing work with or without this money. Are people worried that some of these career mathematicians might give up academia and get jobs in industry if they aren't well enough paid? Money has nothing to do with their motivations.
This has everything to do with how screwed up universities are. The administrations at their respective institutions will all get a percentage of this money. This percentage is the entire reason that they have famous academics as faculty. Mathematicians don't need expensive labs or equipment, but the schools need their cut, so the hotshots have to get some big awards every now and then.
If you really wanted to incentivize people to do math research, how about using this money to provide more academic job opportunities for postdocs?