Sunday, September 06, 2009

 

JSH: Would a major result get picked up?

I'll admit that as someone with an undergraduate degree in physics and probably even without that as just an educated adult I'd say that a major mathematical find important in both mathematics and the sciences including physics should rapidly be picked up around the world and celebrated, regardless of the source of the result.

So that in and of itself makes suspect any position I might make for myself having found major mathematical results important in mathematics and the sciences that have mostly been ignored!

Now then though, for the sake of argument, how exactly do you suppose it would occur for such a thing to happen? For a major mathematical find to get known?

Mathematics professors talking? Maybe grad students? Doing what? Citations in papers? A paper to a journal? Or as one posters recently suggested in a thread, a talk by me at a conference? Or something?

How is it supposed to happen?

Turns out that if you look carefully you'll find that the mechanisms available presuppose that a Ph.D'd mathematician or a Ph.D in some other field with substantial ties to the academic community and a lot of skills in producing papers or talks is the only person who could make such a find.

Built into the system IS an expectation of the source of the knowledge, and that expectation is a Ph.D'd person with substantial academic ties.





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