Transcript Fear of Refrigerators - Math & Computer Science

SOME MATHEMATICAL
CHARACTERS, CRACKPOTS &
CRAZIES
Chuck Groetsch
MAASE – March 28, 2008
Some of you may have met
mathematicians and
wondered how they got that
way. Tom Lehrer
TAKING HILBERT AT HIS WORD
Mathematics is a dangerous profession;
an appreciable proportion of us go mad.
J.E. Littlewood 1885-1977
Interesting or
Amusing Cases
“Grand Law of the
Generation of Quantities”
“Key to the Universe”
Michel Chasles 1793 - 1880
FRS, FLMS, Copley Medalist
Caveat Emptor!
DAVID HILBERT 1862-1945
Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.
Hilbert’s funeral oration:
Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925
Grigori Perelman
Keep your medal and your money
SAD CASES
Georg Cantor 1845 - 1918
A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One
Alan Turing 1912 - 1954
Father of the programmable
computer; artificial intelligence.
Turing the marathoner
Turing the Enigma cracker
Turing Test
A machine pretending to
be a man pretending to
be a woman …..
Dip the apple in the brew.
Let the sleeping death seep
through.
Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs
Gödel has gone completely
crazy …
He has voted for Eisenhower!
A. Einstein
JOHN FORBES NASH 1928 -
This man is a genius.
The Nash equilibrium; Nash
imbedding theorem; Nash-Moser
Theorem, …
Nobel laureate 1994
The Phantom of Fine Hall
“A religious figure of great, but
secret importance”
The Emperor of Antarctica
Then gradually I began to intellectually
reject some of the delusionally influenced
lines of thinking which had been
characteristic of my orientation. This
began, most recognizably with the
rejection of politically oriented thinking as
essentially a hopeless waste of effort.
SCARY CASES
Academie des Sciences
Becquerel Prize 1948
The ‘mad mathematician of Charenton’
It’s a matter of mathematical logic. … I
began my work at the time of that
famous meal. It is not finished
yet. I wanted to know how
things were.
Oswald Teichmüller
Oswald Teichmueller 1913-1943
Aryan students want Aryan
mathematics, not Jewish
mathematics …
Ludwig Bieberbach 1886-1982
Deutsche Mathematik
The important task for
‘National Socialist
science’ is to recognize
the existence of the
‘German essence’ in
works of science and to
then ‘proceed to action’.
Ludwig Bieberbach
U. Bomber
Mathematicians go mad, and
cashiers; but creative artists very
seldom. I am not , as will be
seen, in any sense attacking
logic: I only say that the danger
does lie in logic, not in
imagination.
G.K. Chesterton
Wir Mathematiker sind
alle ein bischen
meschuge
Landau