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Comment by rsj_hn | Hacker News Reader

Strange to have non-researchers or non-mathematicians like Lewis Carrol, Ada Lovelace, or Anna Easly included while world-impacting researchers such as Shigefumi Mori, S.T. Yau, Yuri Manin, Stefan Banach, Simon Donaldson, R. Bott, M. Morse, H. Lebesgue, O. Heaviside, J. Leray, J. Tate, E. Calabi, M. Gromov, <strike>G. Perelman</strike>, F. Adams, H. Kunneth, are left out. Where are they getting their lists of people? It seems they classify anyone famous who was "technical" as a mathematician, which is the only reason why I can think of including people like Einstein, Lewis Carroll, or Ada Lovelace (none of whom made any contribution to math) as mathematicians, but leaving out those who made major advances.

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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carrol was a mathematician and he published enough original mathematical research.

Of course, he is much more famous as a fiction writer than as a mathematician and it can be easily argued that much more important mathematicians (e.g. Grassmann & Clifford and many others) are missing from that timeline, but he certainly cannot be considered as a non-mathematician.

It looks like they were trying to meet a dual quota of non-white, non-male people.

(Also, Yau is there.)

Ah yes, famous non-white females Albert Einstein and Lewis Carrol.

Yeah and famous white males Nightingale and Katherine Johnson.

It’s hard to imagine any finite list like this that doesn’t attract people complaining that their favorite figures were left out.

It’s not so much about who was left out, but rather about who was put in. Some of the people on the list had pretty much zero impact on mathematics.

these figures give context to the average reader

As an average reader, I'd rather not be mislead on

Perelman is right there in the opening frame when I look. Maybe you just missed some of those people.

Thanks I did miss Perelman. I don't think I missed others.

Unfortunately, you did as others have to repeatedly pointed out

Some names are complete nonsense: why is Benjamin Banneker there for building a mechanical clock in the 1800s (when such things were already everywhere) while Phillip Hahn (who build a four-operation mechanical calculator) in the 1700s is not?

They added Katherine Johnson who developed no new theories or applications on Math or Computer Science, but left Margaret Hamilton out (and she was the pioneer and creator of an entire new field!)

Personally I believe including Ada is actually a disservice. If I were female I would think wait what? Female accomplishments were so low that with that you already enter the hall of fame? I know the intention is in the other direction, but maybe it's just me overthinking stuff.

Absolutely agree with you here, it's effectively positive discrimination and really a rather distasteful attempt at it.

Always bothers me the same happens in Civilization games with scientist lists.

Very ignorant comment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll#Mathematical_wor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr...

You're kinda making my point. None of these are actually contributions to mathematical research. A computer program is not mathematical research, nor are field equations in physics. Which is not to say that they are not noteworthy achievements, but it is to say that they are not achievements in mathematics. These three made contributions in other fields. I am not saying they don't deserve fame in the fields of physics or computer science or literature. They certainly do. But they deserve no fame in the field of mathematics, anymore than Morse deserves fame in the field of computer science, or Gromov deserves fame in the field of literature (but he did write books!). The only person in your list of three who could even be called a mathematician was Dodgson, but his contributions are not considered noteworthy enough to make any kind of timeline.

I have to disagree on Einstein, without the field equations it's doubtful psuedo-Riemannian geometry or so-called "Einstein manifolds" would be so big in math. There is also his work on Brownian motion and diffusion. Even if you deny he did "mathematical research" his importance for mathematics justifies him being on a timeline of mathematics .. imho

You can argue that Einstein spurred interest in Geometry, but he himself made no contributions to this field. In fact it was pretty famous that he kept bugging Ricci to help him frame his ideas in mathematical terms. Einstein was a physicist through and through, and not even a mathematical physicist. Now someone like Ed Witten is a completely different beast.

Did computer science as a field exist in Lady Ada's time? No, it did not. And where did computing science get its formal beginnings? In mathematics departments.

I guess I just have an inclusionist mindset with these matters. Popularizers, esotericists, eccentrics, early pioneers of new thought-tech, and people in closely associated fields should at least be considered in projects like this. Contributing to mathematics culture seems important to me, not just contributing to mathematics achievements.

> "And where did computing science get its formal beginnings? In mathematics departments."

Citation needed. You might be able to argue that it had its beginning in EE departments, but CS as a field did not spring from math at all. Seriously there is a difference between formalizing something in mathematical language - which happens to almost every technical field - and having that formalization be considered an advancement in math itself. This is exactly my point about throwing everyone "technical" into the mix. After all, the formalization of chemistry requires lots of math, so Marie Curie must be on the list of mathematicians, too!

> Dodgson, but his contributions are not considered noteworthy enough to make any kind of timeline.

By whom? Obviously the poster did. Lots of people think of him in connection with his work in logic, which isn't research-level, but I think of him in the context of, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgson_condensation , which to my somewhat amateurish knowledge of the subject was a research-level contribution for its time.

> None of these are actually contributions to mathematical research

So what? The site is a Timeline of Mathematics, not a Timeline of Mathematical Research. Surely notable new applications of mathematics belong on the timeline, regardless of whether they involved new research or not.

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