Yitang “Tom” Zhang and fame in mathematics
nautil.us
nautil.us
From wikipedia:
"Zhang's Ph.D. work was on the Jacobian conjecture. After graduation, Zhang had a hard time finding an academic position. In a 2013 interview with Nautilus magazine, Zhang said he did not get a job after graduation. "During that period it was difficult to find a job in academics. That was a job market problem. Also, my advisor did not write me letters of recommendation." The reason behind this is that Zhang's research pointed out the mistakes made by his advisor Tzuong-Tsieng Moh's previous work. Moh was very unhappy with this and refused to write the job recommendation letter for Zhang. Zhang made this claim again in George Csicsery’s documentary film Counting From Infinity while discussing his difficulties at Purdue and in the years that followed. Tzuong-Tsieng Moh, his Ph.D. advisor at Purdue, said that Zhang never came back to him requesting recommendation letters.[8] In a detailed profile published in The New Yorker magazine in February 2015, Alec Wilkinson wrote Zhang "parted unhappily" with Moh, and that Zhang 'left Purdue without Moh’s support, and, having published no papers, was unable to find an academic job'"
His advisor wrote his own version of events here: https://www.math.purdue.edu/~ttm/ZhangYt.pdf
Crazy how this one guy derailed a genius like Zhang. Glad to see he found his way back, but sad that he had to endure almost a decade in the wilderness - at one point even homeless (living out of his car) - working minimum wage jobs just to get by.
It's worse than no publications.
But the lack of LORs... that would be a scarlet letter, no? I've never heard of a PHD advisor doing that; seems quite intentional and not at all like the way he presents it in his little essay I linked in my last post.
[edit:] Peter Sarnak from Princeton does call him a genius. When you read about him online, you actually find several other people who have known/worked with him to call him that as well. So I guess I was wrong.
> Why did you solve this problem and not somebody else?
> I think the important reason is that I persisted for several years. I didn’t give up.
> How long did you work on your conjecture?
> I worked on my conjecture for four years. I worked on it seven days a week. I didn’t take any breaks almost. If we count the time I spent thinking about the problem, then it was more than 10 hours a day. If you count sitting in front of a desk or using a computer, then it was five or six hours a day.
What I'm trying to say is that perhaps you shouldn't worry too much about whether you are a genius or smart enough but just try to be happy by doing something you enjoy.
> A: Yes, this should be true.
> Q: Are you interested in cryptography?
> A: Not so much.
Pure mathematicians are awesome.
> Q: What do you think of Grigori Perelman, who turned down the Fields Medal?
> A: I think it was because of his personality also. Maybe he himself was very proud of himself. Maybe he looked down on other people, even looked down on very important prizes and medals.
> Q: Would you accept a medal?
> A: Yes.
> Q: What would you do with the money?
> A: Maybe the best way would be to give the money to my wife. Let her deal with this issue.
Wow.
There's quite a few cultures where it's a traditional norm to put one's wife in charge of the household finances (cultures in which that wife tends to be stuck at home running it, whereas the husband is mostly home to sleep and otherwise working himself to death). The husband is given sort of an allowance to spend. It's not a strange idea for many people on the planet.
edit: Never mind. You're right. It's 6 assuming the generalized Elliott–Halberstam conjecture is true, and 246 without assuming the conjecture.
Keep going. Do not easily give up."
Sounds like good advice.
Jeremy Lin, again, didn't look like a star, except to a few geeks who reckoned his numbers told a different story to that his own coach believed.
How many people like Lin and Zhang are we missing? Those who, given a little more opportunity, could have become obviously exceptional.