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What do medals and prizes in mathematics actually reward? Thoughts?
Not a mathematician and has never done work even remotely close to mathematics. A bit more of a social scientist. But mathematics has been on my feed for a while now, especially recently all over Twitter with the resolution of the Jacobi conjecture and now the Fields medal.
I looked up the Wikipedia page of Field medalists and I quickly spotted a trend of the recipients:
* Both parents are working in the sciences, and often mathematics, physics or computer science, and sometimes at the university level.
* Often grew up in some very politically stable country with little civil or international strife and a lot of free time to do math, play intellectually simulating games like Chess or Go.
* Was aware of major mathematical competitions in their country at young age and participated in them, usually did exceptionally well.
* Often extraordinarily gifted and quickly moved through the entire K12 process.
* Often quickly paired with another famous mathematician either as mentor or supervisor.
* Often immediately got hired at universities and became professors.
To put it more succinctly, these people:
* Were unnaturally gifted in terms of their inherent neuro-biological make-up,
* Had extraordinary upbringing from supportive parents and social environment,
* Had access to information that most of their peers would not have gotten, e.g., to join certain competitions or work on certain problems.
In this sense, it seems a lot of the prizes are just rewarding things that originated in a mathematician's childhood or even at the moment of birth. And while many other accomplished happened, they were all contingent on these "precocious" or "pre-school" factors.
If they didn't have those favorable childhood conditions, it seems to be doubtful that later accomplishments could have been made.
**So what do you think? Are prizes in mathematics in general are just rewarding favorable childhood conditions of extraordinarily biologically gifted individuals?**
Sorry if this sounds dismissive or jealous. Like I said, I have no skin in this game (not in math at all). I just want to understand how people in math feels about these type of things. If there is any critique, it is towards the reward structure rather than the mathematicians themselves.
#science
source
Not a mathematician and has never done work even remotely close to mathematics. A bit more of a social scientist. But mathematics has been on my feed for a while now, especially recently all over Twitter with the resolution of the Jacobi conjecture and now the Fields medal.
I looked up the Wikipedia page of Field medalists and I quickly spotted a trend of the recipients:
* Both parents are working in the sciences, and often mathematics, physics or computer science, and sometimes at the university level.
* Often grew up in some very politically stable country with little civil or international strife and a lot of free time to do math, play intellectually simulating games like Chess or Go.
* Was aware of major mathematical competitions in their country at young age and participated in them, usually did exceptionally well.
* Often extraordinarily gifted and quickly moved through the entire K12 process.
* Often quickly paired with another famous mathematician either as mentor or supervisor.
* Often immediately got hired at universities and became professors.
To put it more succinctly, these people:
* Were unnaturally gifted in terms of their inherent neuro-biological make-up,
* Had extraordinary upbringing from supportive parents and social environment,
* Had access to information that most of their peers would not have gotten, e.g., to join certain competitions or work on certain problems.
In this sense, it seems a lot of the prizes are just rewarding things that originated in a mathematician's childhood or even at the moment of birth. And while many other accomplished happened, they were all contingent on these "precocious" or "pre-school" factors.
If they didn't have those favorable childhood conditions, it seems to be doubtful that later accomplishments could have been made.
**So what do you think? Are prizes in mathematics in general are just rewarding favorable childhood conditions of extraordinarily biologically gifted individuals?**
Sorry if this sounds dismissive or jealous. Like I said, I have no skin in this game (not in math at all). I just want to understand how people in math feels about these type of things. If there is any critique, it is towards the reward structure rather than the mathematicians themselves.
#science
source
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