My Father André Weil (2018) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

My Father André Weil (2018) [pdf]

ams.org

52 pointssusam7 comments

Thanks for posting.

Others may be interested in this short clip of Weil talking at the 46 minutes mark of “The Story of Maths” documentary: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ejqof

A rare sight, as there isn’t a lot of recording of him online.

Thanks for sharing - that was interesting to watch

One of my favourite stories about André Weil from the book "The Music of the Primes" written by Marcus du Sautoy:

> He wrote to his wife, Eveline, on April 7, 1940, telling her, 'My mathematics work is proceeding beyond my wildest hopes, and I am even a bit worried - if it is only in prison that I work so well, will I have to arrange to spend two or three months locked up every year?'

For another silver lining, confer https://math.mit.edu/~hrm/papers/ss.pdf

Super gifted people. For sure.

As a frenchman, as well as a father I feel so amazed by this way of using each hour, even each minute as a mean to learn something. France as a enlighten tradition with mathematics. Because of these patio aged people.

The reason France's math output is so stellar is because of the controversial grand école system - pretty much every great French mathematician you can name came out of one of the top 2 schools. It's very elitist (and the elitism is misplaced since the system as well as the schools are virtually unknown outside of France compared to, say, the Ivies) but it does have results.

> "Every moment needed to be usefully or pleasantly employed."

Personally, the 2'000 year old formulation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Poetica_(Horace)#Key_conce...

in which every moment should be instructively or pleasantly employed (the difference between useful and enlightening being roughly equivalent to the difference between working and hacking), is preferable.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...

Edit: Incidentally, Paul Lauterbur's connection was MRI.

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