The title is less surprising if you consider that straight after dropping out to be a poet (in high school) he effectively started getting one to one tutoring from a field medalist for three years in his late teens to early 20s, to practically living with the medalist.
Perhaps unrelated, but I wonder who these mentors were in the case of people like da Vinci, Socrates, Archimedes, Newton et al. They must have had some adults who guided them toward what they're known for. It seems absurd to believe that they just happened to grow up like that. It's as if everybody today, once you skim the "Early Life" section, it turns out had something fantastic, like a mother who was a Fields medalist, or uncle who invented this or that. The more that I see, the more I'm of the opinion that "genius" is simply:
1. effort, usually from youth, that nobody knows about so it appears to be innate
2. the effort is motivated and guided by some mentor(s), usually people with serious qualifications, like your Fields medalist uncle deciding to take you under his wing, after you said "math is fun :D" one time at 7 years old when he told you his job was "to do math :)" upon you asking him as children like to do, and turn you into a Fields-winning adult
This reminds me of those people who pretend they're a genius because they can guess the day of the week if you give them a date, when the reality is that anybody can learn to do that because it's just an algorithm[1] that you can calculate in your head and practice to the point that you come off as if you have a photographic memory or something.
As well as mentors, we should consider the environment in which genius arose, their cultural context and influences, the zeitgeist, intellectual atmosphere, schools, parents, friends, colleagues, the books they read.
I think we overvalue the uniqueness of the individual in this hero worship of the lonely genius, as if a flower is independent of the earth from which it grows.
But then again, it's true that there are exceptional stars, singular phenomena that cannot be explained by the sum of its parts. I suppose that leap, the surprising distance between what was given and what the individual made of it, is what we call genius, talent, luck or hard work.
While upbringing ("nurture") is clearly a critical component to success in any specialized field, there is undeniably a "nature" component as well, and I doubt that the best nurture could overcome lack of natural talent anymore than natural talent could overcome lack of nurture. To be the best you need a lot of both.
It's more obvious in athletics, where there is clearly natural talent, but the equalizer is the support network of parents funding practice, driving to games, getting into competitive leagues, etc. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to intellectual talents as well, even if the differences in natural talent are less obvious than in athletics.
It was at least 6 years after dropping out in high school that he met Hironaka. From Huh's Fields medal interview with the International Mathematical Union [1]:
> Soon after finishing college, I had the good fortune to meet Professor Heisuke Hironaka
>I don’t think a field medalist would waste his time with an untalented youth.
Ugh. Do you think a Fields medalist would "waste" his time cleaning his bedroom? Folding his clothes?
1. The world is much more menial than you think it is.
2. Fields medalists are, unsurprisingly, human beings, and keep doing human stuff like making new friends just for fun.
3. Not everyone is living under the weird delusion/obsession where all outcomes have to be maximally favorable for "life to be worth it". Not all companies have to be billion dollar companies. Not all students have to go and win Fields medals.
4. The "untalented youth" is much more interesting than what you give them credit for.
Yes, it was lucky that he was tutored my a Fields medalist. But he did the hard work to get himself tutored: sitting in an algebraic geometry class (that saw attendances dropping from 200 to 5 within a few weeks), reaching out to the professor, traveling with him for 2 years, etc. And then he still needed to do all the work himself for his PhD, and so forth.
That makes sense because getting into top uni like SNU is hard enough as it is. I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there.
It probably helps a lot to grow in an academic household, seems his dad was a stats professor and his mom a linguistic one, his informal math education growing up and work discipline must have been way above average. I bet he was a straight A math student.
> I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there.
"Formal education" is just industrialized mentoring and compelled hard work. Dropouts and "uneducated" people built the world. If you work hard and have good mentors, you can do anything, whether it's in a school or not.
(While I am vehemently opposed to the modern method of education, I don't think that formal education in a classroom setting is inherently bad, nor do I think most people today have the social support, intellect, or temperament necessary to drop out and still be successful.)
From the description, I don't think the term "tutoring" covers it. It was more in the nature of a master-disciple relation, such as is found in Japanese traditional arts. That was the transformational moment in his life.
I think OP is merely suggesting that the tutelage of a Fields medalist had more to do with the subsequent Fields medal than did the poetry. I didn't read the comment as diminishing the accomplishments or suggesting anyone could do the same if they just had the right tutor. It was clarifying the title that misleadingly implies a causal relationship between poetry and math, or that he somehow stopped studying yet succeeded anyway.
Well it was a poet and just decided to take introduction algebraic structures with a fields metal winner?
There's a lot of liberties taken by the pseudo biographical articles, especially when they're dealing with the gee whiz genius trope in American media which is really annoying.
It's really just anti-intellectualisn cloaked to something else.
The title immediately reminded of a David Hilbert quote. Upon hearing that one of his students had dropped out to become a poet, he is said to have remarked:
"Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician."
To me it sounds like a tongue in cheek remark because creativity is obviously needed in poetry and is strongly associated with poetry. Sounds like the type of thing a teacher says to get a laugh out of the students. You can give Hilbert more leeway without more context.
You will then love Paul Erdos sending a colleague an earnest letter saying he was “praying for his soul” for publishing a paper in the Journal of Applied Probability.
This kind of militant snobbery for pure math is common with the greats and shouldn’t be taken personally.
I think it also shouldn't always be taken so seriously. In my experience, mathematicians (both applied and pure) tend to have a sense of humour about this sort of thing, and I see no reason to doubt that that wouldn't have applied to at least some of the greats as well.
It's common for people to talk about different fields this way, it's a form of lighthearted rivalry. Not worth getting worked up over it, unless you're an unfunny boring person.
The physicists where I work like to joke about how engineers can't do basic physics stuff and the engineers like to joke about how physicists struggle to convert design into reality.
Neither of them genuinely dislikes the other's field/passion, they're actually very appreciative of each other's skills. It's just a very common kind of humor.
Engineering, physics, mathematics, astronomy and STEM in general are already appealing to women - it's the bro-centric institutions that are off putting.
Women like R.O have contributed to all those fields since the 1980s .. but then they've been surrounded by others like C.P to take the edge off the boof heads.
If it was said about e.g. accounting it could come off as snobbery. Everyone knows that being a poet requires imagination, so no one is going to see it as anything other than a light-hearted joke.
millitant snobbery reminds me of a student colleague who had been studying math. she had small bells tied into her hair, and she told us that the bells were to remind her that there are other things in life besides math.
It is possible to provide such emphasis without belittling former students in the process.
I’m a bit cautious about this because it’s presented as “he is said to have remarked…”, but cutting people down - especially students - to make some other point is unnecessary and not ideal.
let's just please not forget that they lived in a different time and place... I'm sure in Hilbert's time there was nothing bad about what he said like there's now.
not that I particularly like Hilbert, he gives me a bad vibe because:
how do I forgive shitty professors who have refused to help me? how do I let go of the fact they are awful people from a different era? How do I refuse to undergo the rituals which teach things I whish to not learn (certain attitudes) while at the same time making it through those same rituals I reject?
and it turns out the professor I speak of IS on D. Hilbert's lineage!
Most interesting about this article for me was the parts about how he conducts his thinking, which is slowly and allowing space for distractions or re-reading books instead of finding new ones. It sounds contradictory to what would be productive in learning, but it seems to help him in processing concepts.
It doesn't. If you read the article, another person first assumed that this guy was wasting time on simple concepts and not learning fast enough. Then the realisation came that he was learning them in a deeper level and doing it slowly helped to do that. It's just interesting.
I found the writing of this piece to be very clear and accessible.
Whenever i read something like this, I marvel at the author who can be both fluent in Mathematics and have an ability to convey very complex ideas to a lay reader.
I remember once reading someone on Wall Street Oasis saying that Nobel prizes and Fields medals are nothing special (as a judge of intelligence) as the lure of money found in business is not there to attract the brightest into competing.
You are quoting someone from a financial career interview forum who can't imagine why a bright person would want to pursue a lesser paid career in research.
The Wall Street guys work 90 hour weeks and many have to wear awful clothes in awful offices with awful people. The Fields medalists work 20 or less in their pajamas.
Are you sure the Wall Street guys are better paid?
I find being on Wall Street is nothing remotely special either as the only attraction there is the one from money. The competition then is to optimize profits, increase shareholder value, dream of becoming a billionaire, own a private jet, buy everything in excess of one's usage, and in all, end up upsetting the balance in society.
For those who recall the Regents' recent decision to cut humanities yet again, there will be a special Departmental Curriculum Committee meeting at 4pm on Monday. Meeting Subject - developing and offering new courses for both seniors and graduate students in Mathematics. Starting this Fall term.
- Sonata Wordwright, Departmental Assistant Dean of Humanities for Poetry
"In fact for most of his life his day, at least during the cricket season, would consist of breakfast during which he read The Times studying the cricket scores with great interest. After breakfast he would work on his own mathematical researches from 9 o'clock till 1 o'clock. Then, after a light lunch, he would walk down to the university cricket ground to watch a game. In the late afternoon he would walk slowly back to his rooms in College. There he took dinner, which he followed with a glass of wine. When cricket was not in season, it was the Australian cricket scores he would read in The Times and he would play real tennis in the afternoons."
It seems like it might be time for Korean science & math to have a higher profile; Huh grew up in South Korea and his father was a statistician there, and of course the really big news this year, LK99.
