Why is there no Nobel in mathematics? | Hacker News Reader

Why is there no Nobel in mathematics?

cs.uwaterloo.ca

47 pointsnilmonibasak44 comments

It's OK, there isn't one in economics either, they just stole the name..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economi...

In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Banquet Friedrich Hayek stated that if he had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics he would "have decidedly advised against it"[23][27] primarily because "the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."[27]

That's a little misleading - despite some controversy it's a de facto nobel prize:

>it is identified with [the original nobel prizes], and prizes are announced with and awarded at the same ceremony

>The Prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "in accordance with the rules governing the award of the Nobel Prizes instituted through his [Alfred Nobel's] will"

>The award’s real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” It was not established by Nobel, but supposedly in memory of Nobel. It’s a ruse and a PR trick, and I mean that literally. And it was done completely against the wishes of the Nobel family.

>Members of the Nobel family are among the harshest, most persistent critics of the economics prize, and members of the family have repeatedly called for the prize to be abolished or renamed. In 2001, on the 100th anniversery of the Nobel Prizes, four family members published a letter in the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet, arguing that the economics prize degrades and cheapens the real Nobel Prizes.

>Most recently, in 2004, three prominent Swedish scientists and members of the Nobel committee published an open letter in a Swedish newspaper savaging the fraudulent “scientific” credentials of the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics. “The economics prize diminishes the value of the other Nobel prizes. If the prize is to be kept, it must be broadened in scope and be disassociated with Nobel,” they wrote in the letter, arguing that achievements of most of the economists who win the prize are so abstract and disconnected from the real world as to utterly meaningless.

If you'd like to read about the history of the scam that is the "Nobel Prize in Economics", there's plenty more in this article: http://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economi...

I'm aware of the controversy, but it comes from a very vocal but small minority. That alternet article you linked to is a great example of the absurd bias and political agenda the minority has. Their main gripe is political, not factual - the article is about how many of the prizes go to "theories that concentrated wealth among the top 1%".

I called it a de facto prize, but it's also really a de jure prize: the winner is determined in the same way as the others, the prize is presented at the same ceremony as the others, and it's listed along the other nobel prizes on official lists. The prize carries at least as much prestige as the other prizes to both experts in the field and to the public.

Also, I don't see how family members of Nobel have any authority on the matter (they don't), and I think the prize is far more meaningful and free of bias than something like the peace prize.

Well, yeah, the prize is political because all who get Nobel Prizes in Economics are keynsians of different sort. When you take guys like Krugman - who has Nobel Prize in Economics - and just look at their track record and what they are in favor of like this 2002 piece in which Krugman advocates the FED to create a housing bubble:

http://www.businessinsider.com/krugman-in-02-greenspan-needs...

You really start wondering why complete idiots and morons like this are worthy of the Nobel Prize.

And then his response to this piece when asked about it in 2013 is even worse than the original piece. Krugman says in 2013 about his 2002 article: "What I said was that the only way the Fed could get traction would be if it could inflate a housing bubble. And that’s just what happened."

Let me me repeat here for you this Nobel Prize Genius: "The ONLY way for the FED to get traction in 2002 was to INFLATE HOUSING BUBBLE"

Really? Like really, really? That's the ONLY way? Go to a bubble, so it bursts and destroys the US economy for years? He really, like really, really repeats that nonsene in 2013? You must be kidding me! If he can't come up with better idea to finish a crisis but with creating a bubble? Wow! Just wow!!!

And that's your Nobel Prize Winner in action. He's a moron. Yet, a professor and nobel prize winner. Economics has nothing to do with science, it is too rooted in ideologies. Left or right. But still, having prize for it is asking for trouble. And that's just one example of Krugman saying nonsense. I could go on and on.

Did you look at why Krugman got his nobel prize?

Here's a clue. He's not a monetary economist. His opinions on monetary policy, are therefore of little influence on whether he should get the prize. He's a trade economist, and a rather brilliant one. And that's what he got the prize for, not his opinions on monetary economics, or the business cycle.

Today I learnt that Friedrich Hayek and Eugene Fama are Keynsians.

Milton Friedman too! Not to mention the dozens of others which were not awarded to macroeconomists. Daniel Kahneman and Herbert Simon would especially be surprised to be called Keynsians, given that they are a psychologist and a political scientist, respectively.

They're not keynsians, sure. However, my point was that Nobel Prize in Economics is as risky as Noble Prize in Political Science. Or Philosophy. Or Ethics.

You don't do it. Period.

Krugman's comment was a criticism and analysis of the Fed policy in 2002, not advice.

The Fed helped inflate the Dotcom bubble to the extent that when it collapsed, the only path it left itself to get the economy back to levels approaching that bubble, would be to inflate a new housing bubble.

He wasn't saying they should do it, he was saying that Greenspan and the Fed had backed itself into a policy corner and they only way they'd get the economy to the previous "irrationally exuberant" levels would be to repeat the bubble process.

It's not a bad idea to read primary sources before passing judgment. Krugman makes mistakes but you shouldn't take whatever insta-opinion is published on a blog as definitive proof of the bankruptcy of economics.

Economics isn't bankrupt. Economics is just very ideological. Like Political Science. Or religiion. Or philosophy.

My point is that there shouldn't be Nobel Prize in Economics for that reason. It's as much of a real science as psychology is. If you can't have all serious folks doing that science come to a table and agree that 2+2 is 4, you will end up with mistakes that will cost you Nobel Prize Prestige.

Walesa, a guy who got Peace Nobel Prize in 1980s for figthing communism in Eastern Europe wanted to give it back, once he heard Obama is getting it for "encouragement".

If people like Krugman don't stop making clowns of themselves you may and up with a situation where the Nobel Prize as a whole isn't kept in such a great regard anymore.

So for me, the claim that was made to get rid of Nobel Prize in Economics makes as much sense as not giving it for encouragement or sciences like psychology or political science. They are usually just extension of opinions masquarading as sciences. Not real sciences where you can proof something. Sorry for pooping on your party.

And yeah, having bunch of these clowns at the FED who think that their job is to go from a bubble to another bubble which one bigger than the previous one - how this isn't mad? You call this science? I beg to differ.... it's cheap politics masquarading as serious science. Laughable.

> Economics is just very ideological.

Economics is a science. The subject matter of economics may often touch on issues on which people have ideological investment, but the same is true of all of the social sciences, physics (especially cosmology), biology (a whole host of subfields, but particularly those that have something to say about the presence or absence of innate differences between races, genders, or other subgroups of humanity, or that touch on origins of life and its present diversity), and, well, lots of areas of science.

And, of course -- largely orthogonally to any scientific contribution in the field -- economists (as well as scientists in any field) may have ideological views that they advocate for, whether or not they touch on the subject matter of the field.

Neither of these are reasons to not have Nobel Prizes in particular fields.

> Economics is a science.

Alright, I can use your semantics. Espeically because calling economics science is what we all do.

But it still doesn't change the very valid point that Nobel Prize image may loose because of Economics Nobel Price.

The same way it wouldn't be good for them to have Nobel Prize in Psychology. Or Political Science.

Top experts in these - forgive me the quotes - "sciences" can't agree on even most basic and fundamental concepts in their "sciences".

You'll have keynsians who say you need to print in the crisis. And you'll have austrains claiming that's actually the worst thing you can do. One group calling other pseudo-science and the latter calling former marxist definitely doesn't help its image. Propagating this image to the Nobel Prize isn't not good for Novbel Prize. The claim is 100% valid in my book. I'm not surprised they don't want to have it. It hurts their business.

Going back to Krugman in one of his "brilliant" pieces he suggests World War 3 is needed to end the crisis. Of course with austrains claiming that this is even worse and will make the crisis worse.

For a person on a street this looks like a band of clowns arguing. It's not like Nobel Prize winners in Physics have arguments about value of number pi or there are some who think that Earth rotates the Sun and some other who believe (yep, science - believe, lol) the opposite is true. You see, all I'm saying is, that it is 100% understandable for some of the Nobel family to be disgusted with it and not wanting their Nobel Prize to suffer from that. What's so difficult about understanding that?

Expanding on that thought: just imagine we have year 1490 and we don't know any better. Let's say a Nobel Prize in Physics exists. Let's say that for whatever reason a scientist who believes that Sun goes around the Earth gets it. While guys who say that Earth goes around Sun are ridiculed and laughed at. Maybe Nobel Family members not being experts in economics just - rightly - are afraid that we'll get better, much better in Economics in the future and then the Nobel Prize image will suffer. Because they are giving it out currently to some clowns, not even knowing about it. That's their perspective and I think I agree with it. Wouldn't you?

As an earth sciences student I heard exactly the same myth about Nobel being cuckold by a geologist, explaining why there was no prize in geology. It's funny to see that the myth knows no disciplinary boundaries.

That's covered by the Fields medal.

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

The fields medal came 30+ years after the Nobels, though. The article explains why it wasn't there to begin with. If there was a Nobel for math, perhaps the Fields Medal would have been for another subject, or not created at all.

Fields medal is an award that explicitly targets younger mathematicians (below 40), whereas the nobel has no such stipulation

The Fields medal for Economics is the John Bates Clark medal. I don't recall how many who win the Clark go on to win the Riksbank Nobel, but it's a lot.

Google cache entry, since the link is currently down:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

There is the Abel prize, granted by the Norwegian government, of a similar sum: $1,000,000 USD.

Also, the Fields medal

The Fields medal is deliberately not open to Mathematicians over the age of 40 to encourage young Mathematicians. Very depressing for older Mathematicians. Andrew Wiles was too old to win it, and Erdös is not a Field medalist (although not sure if that's because of age or oversight).

Do the rules explicitly say whether the age limit is in base 10?

I assume it says "forty" which is enough to avoid this kind of ambiguity.

Edit: Actually no, quoting the official website [1]:

> A candidate's 40th birthday must not occur before January 1st of the year of the Congress at which the Fields Medals are awarded.

[1] http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/fields/details/

relavent abstruse goose: http://abstrusegoose.com/518

I honestly couldn't believe that was really a rule for the fields medal. Aren't mathematical breakthroughs by over 40s rare enough as it is?

I don't think Wiles is depressed by the lack of a Nobel for his work.

Likewise, the Nobel Prizes can't be awarded posthumously which is a terrible discouragement to the brilliant dead.

This may be a joke, but many people care about their legacy.

Age is but a fever chill

that every physicist must fear.

He's better dead than living still

when once he's past his thirtieth year.

(PAM Dirac)

The Fields Medal is comparable to the Nobel awards in terms of reputation, but not in other ways. For example, it is awarded only every four years, recipients must be under 40 years of age, and the prize money is "only" CAD$15,000.

(Edit: CAN$ -> CAD$ - Thanks @alanctgardner2.)

Just a note, the symbol for CAnadian Dollars is CAD, not CAN.

Is there a type of Canadian ATM called AutoCAD?

In Canadia, the ATMs are actually called ABMs (automatic banking machine). Or in French Canadia, "guichet".

TMYK.

However, the story of some rivalry over a woman is obviously much more amusing, and that's why it will probably continue to be repeated.

Great storytellers never let facts get in the way of a good yarn!

there is less money in mathematics than in the sciences, unless you're the NSA or similar ;)

that said, i have a history as a math and physics geek and am disappointed to see a more limited patronage of mathematics compared to the sciences. mathematics would not have advanced the same way it did without substantial patronage from the european ruling class.

Unless you want to work for a hedge fund, in which case there's a ton of money to be made in mathematics...

Goldman Sachs would disagree.

When Nobel created the price there were not computers, so Math was very similar to Philosophy, it became harder and harder to make great discoveries by the law of diminishing returns, while with other sciences it was different.

Can you prove there isn't?

This is very strange timing for me, I was positive there was a Nobel in maths and nearly said that instead of Medicine as the final quiz question last night! Would have cost me £300 if I did and this thread would have been horrible.

Because the Nobel prizes are inherently political -- scientists and governments alike needed to justify the enormous investment in the LHC, and what better way than a token Nobel award?

The LHC may be worth the investment but the Nobel prizes aren't any indicator of it.

Whether a public work like the LHC is worth the investment is a political decision. A award that only measured its scientific accomplishments could never tell you whether it was worth the investment or not.

The Nobel has been around longer than the LHC, they have nothing to do with each other.

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