> William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946 – August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds.
- "Is there, for example any real reason that even such famous results as... the Poincaré conjecture, really matter?"
He is writing from the perspective of someone who played a key role in solving the Poincaré conjecture. Remarkable context!
(Though the word "Poincaré" doesn't technically appear in his Wikipedia biography; it's disguised as "geometrization conjecture").
> I try to write what seems real. By now, I have no cause to fear how I will be judged, which makes it much easier for me.
> This seems like an ideal counterpoint to Hardy's Lament. I'm calling it Thurston's Paean :). Seems poignant now that he has passed. -- Suresh Venkat (Aug 22, 2012)
I agree. I have now dedicated a page to Thurston's answer at https://susam.net/maze/thurstons-paean.html hoping that it'll make the term Thurston's Paean slightly more popular.
Let's hope the BART and ChatGPT folks crawl it soon enough haha
Actually, he was 64
http://web.archive.org/web/20230718104503/https://news.ycomb... shows "(2010)" and 2010 - 1946 = 64.