TFW Karl Weierstrass realized that Sonya Kovalevskaya was a mathematical genius, as told by Alice Munro in her short story "Too Much Happiness". (We are going to discuss this story in my "math for liberal arts" class.)pic.twitter.com/hJvjQBDsdK
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Mathematical physicist and mentor to mathematically talented youth. Talent is that which bridges the gap between what can be taught and what must be learned.
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TFW Karl Weierstrass realized that Sonya Kovalevskaya was a mathematical genius, as told by Alice Munro in her short story "Too Much Happiness". (We are going to discuss this story in my "math for liberal arts" class.)pic.twitter.com/hJvjQBDsdK
"Too Much Happiness" is ultimately a somewhat frustrating story, though, because it makes Kovalevskaya's mathematics merely a black box. Like all other fictions about mathematicians, it reveals nothing of the profound effect that the practice of mathematics has on character.
I suggest you read The Dispossessed (technically it's a theoretical physicist, but still) and the collection Story of your life for more realistic descriptions.
Thanks for the suggestions, Prof. Barbara! I’m unfamiliar with the stories. Who wrote them?
"The Story of your Life," about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is by Ted Chiang; it was recently adapted into a film entitled "Arrival," which, though different from the original in essential ways, nevertheless won considerable critical praise and performed well at the box office.
It is one of several short stories by Chiang that appear together under this same title, all of them extremely interesting.
I should perhaps add that "The Story of Your Life" also ponders the distinction between physical laws as differential equations, and physical laws as extremal (e.g., Maupertuis) principles -- as well as the implications of this distinction for our conceptions of time.
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