Pierre Deligne Wins Abel Prize For Contributions To Algebraic Geometry 55
ananyo writes "Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne completed the work for which he became celebrated nearly four decades ago, but that fertile contribution to number theory has now earned him the Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics. The prize is worth 6 million Norwegian krone (about US$1 million). In short, Deligne proved one of the four Weil conjectures (he proved the hardest; his mentor, Alexander Grothendieck, had proved the second conjecture in 1965) and went on to tools such as l-adic cohomology to extend algebraic geometry and to relate it to other areas of maths. 'To some extent, I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast."
Why so much later?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm wondering what the use of these prizes is. I thought most of them were created to help the researches, but if you only get it after you've retired, what's the use?
of course the problem is with newer research that it's hard to estimate its longterm value (and if there was no fraud)
but maybe they should just give these guys a nice medal, and invest the rest of the money in current promising research that probably desperately needs it?
Re:Why so much later?? (Score:4, Funny)
To encourage others. Even if it can't now be used for research there will at least be some people saying "Oh, so being a mathematician is a path to becoming a millionaire".
That will encourage some kids and uni/college students. It's an attempt to try and do something about the divide in society between the recognition given to sports stars, celebrities, manufactured pop stars, and other overly glamorised non-contributors to the human race who generally get lavished in riches for nothing other than being a fucking idiot publicly and the people who do actually contribute like scientists.
There's still a long way to go because you'll still get paid way more for nothing other than the ability to kick a ball around a field effectively than you will for curing cancer, inventing the world wide web, or sending people to the moon and robots to Mars, but at least it's an attempt at doing something about the problem of western society where idiocy is valued far more greatly than intelligence and competence.
Mod this properly! (Score:1)
" 'To some extent... (Score:2, Redundant)
... I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast."
He then went on to demonstrate mathematically that "some" is less than "all" by grabbing the check and running for the hills.
I suspect this comment was on purpose (Score:5, Funny)
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Math humor is the best humor.
I don't know about that. I often find it has the power to divide a room.
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OCT31=DEC25! Wocka Wocka!
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Am I supposed to read that as "OCT31 equals DEC25.....NOT :P" or "OCT31 equals DEC25, surprise!"?
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I don't know about that. I often find it has the power to divide a room.
True, but you can't deny that minus the math haters, it provides several times the hilarity of boring, non-math humor!
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Math humor is the best humor.
I don't know about that. I often find it has the power to divide a room.
And this medal has the power to ward off the plague of bad arithmetic.
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Math humor is the best humor.
What, humor has a total order defined on it?
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Partially.
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Why can't these guys just graciously accept the prize, without claiming or implying they don't deserve it?
I dunno because their discovery was built on 2500 years of work by their predecessors?
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Why can't these guys just graciously accept the prize, without claiming or implying they don't deserve it?
What he said was !=0, or twern't nothing.
let's start a giant math debate (Score:2)
Weil wanted to prove that just because an area has a finite length, that means there's an actual, real number of individual points in it? Um, if you think there's 1 million points in an area or line or whatever
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Or am I completely misinterpreting the wording of the stated Weil conjectures?
The maths is entirely beyond me, but I'm gonna go with... yes.
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Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_point [wikipedia.org]
(c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_number [wikipedia.org])
Integers (Score:3)
From the article: "The Weil conjectures concern the points on algebraic varieties that have integer coordinates (in the case of the circle, x and y must be whole numbers). The number of such solutions — typically, there are only finitely ma
Re:let's start a giant math debate (Score:5, Informative)
No.
From your comments on the matter I suspect it would be challenging to even begin to explain this to you, since it looks like you are interpreting "field" as "area". You're about 3 semesters of algebra away from understanding the vocabulary, let alone the purpose and function of these conjectures.
Note: this isn't meant as a slam, and you shouldn't feel bad (honestly!). Cutting edge pure math research is so far out there it's really difficult to jump in as an enthusiast in the way that interested parties can casually follow things like particle physics. When I was reading algebraic topology as a phd student (I flunked out... wasn't good enough, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt) I couldn't even begin to explain what it was that I was doing to people, even very smart people, just because of how abstract it all is.
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I think you just described my level of math knowledge as well. I was trying to understand this explanation of Weil conjectures [ucdavis.edu] and couldn't make it past the first paragraph without being lost.
You might want to try reading Gowers's account of the work of Deligne. It's a short article, and slightly less technical than the one you "read". Here : Pierre Deligne's Work [wordpress.com]
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> out there it's really difficult to jump in as an
> enthusiast in the way that interested parties
> can casually follow things like particle physics.
Particle physics is a fairly new field -- within the last hundred years, really. We don't *know* that much yet, and so consequently an interested amateur can educate himself on a decent percentage of at least the basics in a few months' worth of free time.
Algebra is a relatively mature field. It's been stu
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Part of the confusion is that the use of "algebra" in advanced math is far broader and involves math far higher than what is covered in "Algebra" and "Algebra II" style classes you see in high school or in undergraduate classes. The difference is almost on par with calling an "Introduction to using MS Office" class "Computer Science 101." The first taste of the more advanced math would be an abstract algebra course taken, typically taken by a first or second year math major, cover topics like group theory
I feel that this money belongs to mathematics (Score:2)
If that money belongs to mathematics, then we get to claim all HFT hedge funds as well.
What should he buy? (Score:2)
Give that he spent decades of his life slaving away over complex mathematical proofs, he really ought use his well deserved prize money to buy
Hookers
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... and then he can tell his wife that he's with his hookers; his hookers that he's with his wife; and go to the office and do more math!
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Assuming by "hookers" you mean "prostitutes", then you don't buy them. Just like you don't sell your body when you go to work, neither do prostitutes. Prostitutes sell a service, just like hair dressers and masseurs do. So, really, you should say that the person should buy, not "hookers", but rather "the services of hookers".
Moreover, you could probably get free sex with a million dollars, even if you are 68.
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Well, Nobel prize laureate Richard Feynman his lunch breaks in strip bars, scribbling equations on napkins. So there is a precedent there . . .
Re:Any matematician there? (Score:4, Informative)
The short (and flip) answer is: who cares? Certainly not the researcher, and neither do I.
But that's not very helpful, or easy for somone who isn't a pure mathematician to understand. However, it is frequently the reality of the situation. Pure math does not concern itself with application or any dirty real world situations (hence: pure). Algebraic geometry as a field of study was popular in the pure math boom at the beginning of the 20th century and then fell out of favor in the middle part as it was considered to be a dead field (this happens from time to time when practical avenues are all exausted, limits are reached on computational methods, and departments dismantle research groups either intenionally or naturally as interests are turned elsewhere). The late 20th c. saw a resurgence precicely because of high level computer science turning back some of the issues listed parenthetically above. Parts of the weil conjectures have connections to lie algebras, which are very popular right now due to applications to physics and computer science.
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What? There is no doubt there is an interest, and even a large interest in computational algebraic geometry. But this wasn't responsible for the resurgence of algebraic geometry.
Weil formulated his conjecture by pretending that he had this mathematical tool known as (a good) "cohomology" (theory). He didn't have such a tool, but if he did, the Weil conjectures are exactly what this tool would allow him to prove.
The late 1930's saw the fall of the Italian school and Zariski et al started working on reformula
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Deligne is a huge mathematician, but (Score:4, Funny)
Deligne is a huge mathematician, but :
- Grothendieck give Deligne a lot of unpublished things, to be published;
- Deligne use it, but never publish it,
- Deligne made everything to hide it, and to let others think Grothendieck was fool.
Deligne use (for his only use) the tools given by Grothendieck, but hide and destroyed the spirit of it.
Even without this awful things he does, Deligne is on of the very big mathematician.
But mathematics lose a lot in this malversations.
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You can find recolte et semailles by Alexandre Grothendieck on http://acm.math.spbu.ru/RS/
I was shocked to see he wasn't black (Score:1)
Weren't you?
Since "We're all the same", and 'Diversity is our strength", or so our Jewish 'masters' keep telling us, over and over again.
I bet you would much rather live in an all white country.
After all, it seems as if half the third world would much rather live among white people than THEIR OWN KIND...