Trying to imagine what it must feel like to have Terence Tao summarize your argument while mentioning that he'd tried something similar but failed.
"The arguments are largely Fourier analytic in nature. The first few steps are standard, and many analytic number theorists, including myself, who have attempted to break the Ingham bound, will recognize them; but they do a number of clever and unexpected maneuvers."
I haven't met him personally, but Tao's writing is very humble and very kind. He talks openly about trying things and not having them work out. And he writes in general a lot about tools and their limitations. I definitely recommend reading his blog.
I find that mathematicians tend to have the smallest egos -- eccentric as they may be. I think it's because the difficulty of mathematics reminds one of their fallibility.
In school, I typically found the math and physics teachers to be humbler than the others. Not always, but, I couldn't help but notice that trend.
Yes but it's Terence Tao. I mean, the set of living mathematicians is not well ordered on greatness but if it were, Terence Tao would be fairly close to the upper limit.
It must feel like meritocracy. Like when ranking, particularly in strict order, is not the norm - so Terrence Tao doesn't see himself "on top" of anything. Moreover it must imply some solid grounding and a good understanding of how someone's actions are not expected to be correlated with their reputation. This is especially the case where getting the results is a personal or strictly team effort, not a popularity contest.
It can be unexpeted for anyone that's operating in the regular business, corporate, VC and general academic landscape where politics rule while meritocracy is a feel good motivator while popularity is the real coin.
"The arguments are largely Fourier analytic in nature. The first few steps are standard, and many analytic number theorists, including myself, who have attempted to break the Ingham bound, will recognize them; but they do a number of clever and unexpected maneuvers."