Timeline for answer to Why might André Weil have named Carl Ludwig Siegel the greatest mathematician of the 20th century? by Igor Rivin
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 8, 2012 at 19:59 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @Pete: I certainly can't blame you for being skeptical, and as for context, true enough also. | |
| Nov 8, 2012 at 13:44 | comment | added | user9072 | @Igor Rivin: Regarding your reply to anon. While I strongly assumed that you knew/were quite sure about this, it is not clear that everybody reading this will know this. In that sense, I would have appreciated if you had made this explicit earlier/right away. And it seems in view of Pete L. Clark's comments that I was not alone. | |
| Nov 8, 2012 at 4:39 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | More to the point, all opportunity for context is lost. When I said that the statement was implausible, I meant that it was implausible that Siegel was sincerely inquiring what happened to Andre Weil in a period of at least 30 years since his thesis. If Siegel was making some kind of joke or ironic comment: okay, but I think to appreciate it we had to be there...and we weren't. Maybe the quip means that Siegel didn't respect Weil; maybe it means something else entirely. I am wary of drawing any serious conclusions from anecdotes like this one. | |
| Nov 8, 2012 at 4:29 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Igor: I don't mean anything personal by this, but: "Igor Rivin says that Paul Cohen said that Carl Siegel said" is not my idea of an unimpeachable source. (You can change the names of the people involved to X,Y,Z; the problem is that this is double hearsay.) | |
| Nov 7, 2012 at 21:00 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @anon: I am quite sure CLS knew exactly what AW was up to in the fifty years since his thesis. What he thought of it was perhaps expressed by his question. | |
| Nov 7, 2012 at 16:00 | comment | added | paul garrett | There is an obvious opportunity for rhetorical effect. | |
| Nov 7, 2012 at 13:52 | comment | added | anon | I agree with Pete. Siegel was certainly aware of Weil's work, for example on the zeta function of curves over finite fields. | |
| Nov 7, 2012 at 13:35 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | @Pete: plausible or not, it comes from an unimpeachable source and is true. | |
| Nov 7, 2012 at 11:18 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | This is an amusing story, but I don't find it plausible. | |
| Nov 6, 2012 at 9:53 | comment | added | user9072 | Since I already missed the intent of one comment on this question: could you please clarify what the context of this should be, and how you want this to be read (somewhat literally or otherwise). | |
| Nov 6, 2012 at 4:19 | comment | added | Igor Rivin | Second hand from Paul Cohen, and yes. | |
| Nov 6, 2012 at 4:15 | comment | added | 36min | Source? BTW, what's Weil's thesis about? Mordell-Weil? | |
| Nov 6, 2012 at 3:45 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by S. Carnahan♦ | ||
| Nov 6, 2012 at 3:24 | history | answered | Igor Rivin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |