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Comment by dhc02 | Hacker News Reader

That the Fields medal is in the public imagination at all is mostly due to its mention in the movie Good Will Hunting.

In which it is explained simply as "like the Nobel Prize for math".

So that's it. There you go

I enjoyed Good Will Hunting, it is easily the coolest commutative diagrams have ever been with the general public. It was also released 25 years ago, before approximately a quarter of the world's population was born. I don't think that is why.

It is definitely why. I know nothing about the fields medal beyond that movie.

It still holds a pretty compelling position in the cultural zeitgeist - it's become an object beyond an event, largely decoupled from its origination by virtue of its excellence.

But movies like these have the power to shape public perception for a long time. Even journalists who might have never seen the movie might just use the like the nobel prize, but for mathematics line. Last time I heard precisely this sentence was last time the fields medal was announced.

Out of that quarter of the world's population, how many know that the Fields medal exists?

And going further, how much mindshare does that quarter of the population have in "public imagination"? Surely, people under 14 not having watched <movie> does not preclude that movie from being influential?

Also, is if really true that people only watch movies made after they're born?

Some movies remain popular long after they were released though.

I'm not necessarily arguing it was GWH, but for sake of argument say it did have that effect, it then gets perpetuated by journalists, enters the public psyche, and goes on from there.

I don't think the suggestion was that everyone watched GWH and then had that misconception straight from primary source.

I probably view(ed) it a bit wrongly too, and I have seen GWH, but I'm pretty sure I'd read ('pop math'/news) about the award/it's winners before that.

And nobody that watched it ever spoke of it again, to anyone, ever. Especially about them apples.

> It was also released 25 years ago, before approximately a quarter of the world's population was born

Sure. Except that most people under the age of 25 probably haven't heard of the Fields medal anyway, unless it's from someone who watched GWH.

You would be astonished at how long phrases can last, with little sense behind it at all!

My favorite example is documented in Bully for Brontosaurus (see https://www.amazon.com/Bully-Brontosaurus-Reflections-Natura... if you want to buy it) in the essay, "The case of the creeping fox terrier clone." For close to a century, the first thing that everyone learned about the early horse Euohippus, officially known as Hyracotherium, was that it was "about the size of a small fox terrier". This despite the fact that essentially nobody knew what size a small fox terrier WAS. And despite the fact that later research found that the animal in question actually weighed several times what a fox terrier does! (But the shoulder height is indeed close.)

I've certainly seen the phrase "like the Nobel for mathematics" many times. I couldn't even have cited the original source. But it doesn't surprise me if this is the only thing most people have heard about the Fields medal. And it also doesn't surprise me that it would come from a movie.

This article says it's an artifact of cold war politics https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/how-math-g...

I'm not personally familiar with the history, this just turned up when I googled the nytimes for "fields medal" and "nobel prize", but that query also turns up articles from 1986 and 1977.

On the other hand, if it's still part of the public imagination, it does seem more likely that its from Good Will Hunting and not the cold war.

> like the Nobel Prize for math

One recognizes individuals who are not too old and the other recognizes individuals who are not too old (i.e. dead).

Side note, is your screen name a reference to the Beaver?

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