Goro Shimura has died | Hacker News Reader

Goro Shimura has died

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86 pointsColinWright10 comments

Only tangentially related, but reading over Taniyama's wikipedia page, I'm fascinated to see that he adopted the alternative pronunciation of his name.

"Taniyama's given name 豊 was intended to be read as Toyo, but was frequently misread as the more common form Yutaka, which he eventually adopted as his own name."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutaka_Taniyama#cite_ref-1

His family name has characters which can have strange pronunciations as well. I remember being so confused that Hasegawa would be written: 長谷川 (literally "long valley river") that you would expect to be Nagatanigawa. Why shouldn't Taniyama's name be Seyama to follow along? I wonder if his parents anticipated his struggles and gave him names which suited his path.

These things about Japanese make it seem less prescriptive than it appears at first glance, and more beautiful.

But, what a sad end to a brilliant thinker.

For those who don't recognise the name, Gorō Shimura was a Japanese mathematician. He is the "Shimura" in the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, which was what ultimately led to Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

The excellent Horizon documentary, "Fermat's Last Theorem", about Wiles' proof has some great interview footage with Shimura where he even discusses his sadness and being perplexed at Taniyama's sudden suicide.

When asked about Wiles' proof proving their conjecture, he quips with a sly grin: "Well, my first reaction was, 'I told you so.'"

Shimura's biography "Map of my life" is a fascinating read, especially on his tragic friendship with Taniyama which led to the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

I knew nothing about Taniyama until I read his Wikipedia article, which says he suffered from depression and committed suicide at age 31; and soon after the woman he was going to marry also committed suicide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutaka_Taniyama

He mentions in the Horizon "Fermat's Last Theorem" documentary that Taniyama was "not a careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes, but he made mistakes in a good direction, so eventually he got [to] the right answer, and I tried to imitate him, but I found out that it is very difficult to make good mistakes." He says it with a wry grin.

And since then their conjecture (now proven) was expanded to become the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_theorem

Source: https://www.math.princeton.edu/news/professor-emeritus-goro-...

I recommend reading the wonderful book "Fermat's Last Theorem" to understand the historical context of his contributions to math.

There is no photo of the mathematician in the Wikipedia page!

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