From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5343 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: re: A well kept secret Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:12:06 +0000 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1260453635 29220 80.91.229.12 (10 Dec 2009 14:00:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:00:35 +0000 (UTC) To: Robert Seely , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Thu Dec 10 15:00:27 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NIjYQ-0002L1-H3 for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:59:38 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NIj0G-0006Jr-2O for categories-list@mta.ca; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:24:20 -0400 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5343 Archived-At: I have read that Dirac had no empathy, not even for his family. I think th= e story goes the same for many other famous mathematicians/scientists. Why i= s it being so promoted that being a good mathematician and a good human being is impossible? Is it really true? -Mehrnoosh On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Robert Seely wrote: > Well, we might not say that, but Voevodsky did. Link on the triples > page: http://www.math.mcgill.ca/triples/ (or directly > http://claymath.msri.org/voevodsky2002.mov) where he says "Categories: > one of the most important ideas of 20th century mathematics". > > BTW - the Farmelo book, The Strangest Man, is one I recommend to my > students - it's well worth looking at. But one thing that struck me > was how *little* Farmelo plays the "strange man" theme - Dirac was > indeed strange, but that's not what makes him worth reading about, nor > was it what made him a great theoretician. Farmelo doesn't (IMO) make > the same mistake so many documentary producers do ... > > -=3D rags =3D- > > > > On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Joyal, Andr=E9 wrote: > > Category theory is a powerful mathematical language. >> It is extremely good for organising, unifying and suggesting new >> directions of research. >> It is probably the most important mathematical developpement of the 20th >> century. >> >> But we cant say that publically. >> >> Andr=E9 Joyal >> --=20 Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh EPSRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow Oxford University Computing Laboratory Research Fellow of Wolfson College http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Mehrnoosh.Sadrzadeh/ [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]