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As he was brushing his teeth on the morning of July 17, 2014, Thomas Royen, a little-known retired German statistician, suddenly lit upon the proof of a famous conjecture at the intersection of geometry, probability theory, and statistics that had eluded top experts for decades.
Known as the Gaussian correlation inequality (GCI), the conjecture originated in the 1950s, was posed in its most elegant form in 1972 and has held mathematicians in its thrall ever since. "I know of people who worked on it for 40 years," said Donald Richards, a statistician at Pennsylvania State University. "I myself worked on it for 30 years."
[...] No one is quite sure how, in the 21st century, news of Royen's proof managed to travel so slowly. "It was clearly a lack of communication in an age where it's very easy to communicate," [Bo'az] Klartag said.
"But anyway, at least we found it," he added—and "it's beautiful."
[...] The "feeling of deep joy and gratitude" that comes from finding an important proof has been reward enough. "It is like a kind of grace," he said. "We can work for a long time on a problem and suddenly an angel—[which] stands here poetically for the mysteries of our neurons—brings a good idea."
Source: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/elusive-math-proof-found-almost-lost
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:46PM (1 child)
Oh! So you do agree that at least some of the retired people today provide value for the society and worth prolonging their life with mere years, in defiance of your "changing one's life span (if you're male) from 75 years to 80... Not very interesting at present for the money spent." assertion?
How do you manage to keep the two conflicting ideas in your head in the same time?
Of course it didn't. Glad you actually got it, your "What's new about that?" didn't sound too encouraging.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:49AM
Who said otherwise? Not me. Read the end of the quote you put up there. "Not very interesting for money spent." Why is it so hard to think about cost? I guess it's just a perception and cognitive problem common to all humans.
I think if living that five years more meant someone had to die, you'd get it real fast. But when it's just boatloads of money getting pushed around, you don't see the lives being squandered.