Example of a Mathematician/Physicist whose Other Publications during their PhD eclipsed their PhD Thesis The Next CEO of Stack OverflowChanging Careers: Becoming a Professional MathematicianPunctuation and Other Rules for Variables and Their Verbal Definitions in Math NarrativeShould I quit the PhD?The “derived drift” is pretty unsatisfying and dangerous to category theory (or at least, to me)
Example of a Mathematician/Physicist whose Other Publications during their PhD eclipsed their PhD Thesis
The Next CEO of Stack OverflowChanging Careers: Becoming a Professional MathematicianPunctuation and Other Rules for Variables and Their Verbal Definitions in Math NarrativeShould I quit the PhD?The “derived drift” is pretty unsatisfying and dangerous to category theory (or at least, to me)
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I am wondering if there is some example of a mathematician or physicist who published other papers at the same time as their PhD work and independently of it which actually eclipsed the content of the PhD thesis.
The only semi-example I can think of immediately is Einstein, whose other publications in 1905 (especially on special relativity and the photoelectric effect) eclipsed his PhD thesis which was published in the same year. Although it contained important insights, it was somewhat forgotten to the point where he felt that he had to remind people about it.
Although this is a soft question, I didn't ask in Academia as I didn't want examples outside of mathematics and physics.
soft-question
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I am wondering if there is some example of a mathematician or physicist who published other papers at the same time as their PhD work and independently of it which actually eclipsed the content of the PhD thesis.
The only semi-example I can think of immediately is Einstein, whose other publications in 1905 (especially on special relativity and the photoelectric effect) eclipsed his PhD thesis which was published in the same year. Although it contained important insights, it was somewhat forgotten to the point where he felt that he had to remind people about it.
Although this is a soft question, I didn't ask in Academia as I didn't want examples outside of mathematics and physics.
soft-question
$endgroup$
2
$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
6
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I am wondering if there is some example of a mathematician or physicist who published other papers at the same time as their PhD work and independently of it which actually eclipsed the content of the PhD thesis.
The only semi-example I can think of immediately is Einstein, whose other publications in 1905 (especially on special relativity and the photoelectric effect) eclipsed his PhD thesis which was published in the same year. Although it contained important insights, it was somewhat forgotten to the point where he felt that he had to remind people about it.
Although this is a soft question, I didn't ask in Academia as I didn't want examples outside of mathematics and physics.
soft-question
$endgroup$
I am wondering if there is some example of a mathematician or physicist who published other papers at the same time as their PhD work and independently of it which actually eclipsed the content of the PhD thesis.
The only semi-example I can think of immediately is Einstein, whose other publications in 1905 (especially on special relativity and the photoelectric effect) eclipsed his PhD thesis which was published in the same year. Although it contained important insights, it was somewhat forgotten to the point where he felt that he had to remind people about it.
Although this is a soft question, I didn't ask in Academia as I didn't want examples outside of mathematics and physics.
soft-question
soft-question
asked 11 hours ago
community wiki
Tom
2
$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
6
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago
add a comment |
2
$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
6
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago
2
2
$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
6
6
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago
add a comment |
4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
$begingroup$
Anatoly Karatsuba discovered the
Karatsuba algorithm in 1960, and reported it to Kolmogorov who published it under his (Karatsuba's) name without his knowledge. It seems fair to say that this first example of a "divide and conquer" algorithm eclipsed Karatsuba's 1966 thesis on "The method of trigonometric sums and intermediate value theorems".
For a physics example (from my own university) I note George Uhlenbeck, who with Goudsmit introduced the electron spin in a 1925 publication, while his 1927 Ph.D. thesis on quantum statistics was much less influential. (Here is the story how two Ph.D. students discovered the electron spin, which was missed by a giant like Pauli.)
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I would contend that Claude Shannon's Master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1936) far overshadows his PhD thesis, "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics" (1940). I'm not exactly sure how reliable Google Scholar citation counts are, but for what it's worth, it lists 1423 citations for the former and only 89 for the latter.
EDITED TO ADD:
While Alan Turing's PhD Thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938), introduced the concept of ordinal logic and also oracle machines, I suggest that it barely compares to the impact of his earlier paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1937).
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Gauss defended his PhD in 1799. The topic was the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of algebra. But in 1798 he wrote Disquistiones Arithmeticae laying the foundation of modern number theory (published in 1801). Moreover, in 1796 he started his famous Daybook, which contains plenty of results of fundamental importance (for example the expression of AGM in terms of an elliptic integral).
The result he was especially proud with was the construction of the regular 17-gon (Heptadecagon)
which is obtained in 1796.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Solovay came up with his model of ZF in which all sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable in 1964, the same year that he defended his PhD thesis, which is on something else entirely (the Riemann-Roch theorem in differential geometry). I haven't been able to find an absolute statement that this was during his PhD, however.
Also, aren't these questions usually community wiki?
$endgroup$
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
add a comment |
Your Answer
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4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
$begingroup$
Anatoly Karatsuba discovered the
Karatsuba algorithm in 1960, and reported it to Kolmogorov who published it under his (Karatsuba's) name without his knowledge. It seems fair to say that this first example of a "divide and conquer" algorithm eclipsed Karatsuba's 1966 thesis on "The method of trigonometric sums and intermediate value theorems".
For a physics example (from my own university) I note George Uhlenbeck, who with Goudsmit introduced the electron spin in a 1925 publication, while his 1927 Ph.D. thesis on quantum statistics was much less influential. (Here is the story how two Ph.D. students discovered the electron spin, which was missed by a giant like Pauli.)
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Anatoly Karatsuba discovered the
Karatsuba algorithm in 1960, and reported it to Kolmogorov who published it under his (Karatsuba's) name without his knowledge. It seems fair to say that this first example of a "divide and conquer" algorithm eclipsed Karatsuba's 1966 thesis on "The method of trigonometric sums and intermediate value theorems".
For a physics example (from my own university) I note George Uhlenbeck, who with Goudsmit introduced the electron spin in a 1925 publication, while his 1927 Ph.D. thesis on quantum statistics was much less influential. (Here is the story how two Ph.D. students discovered the electron spin, which was missed by a giant like Pauli.)
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Anatoly Karatsuba discovered the
Karatsuba algorithm in 1960, and reported it to Kolmogorov who published it under his (Karatsuba's) name without his knowledge. It seems fair to say that this first example of a "divide and conquer" algorithm eclipsed Karatsuba's 1966 thesis on "The method of trigonometric sums and intermediate value theorems".
For a physics example (from my own university) I note George Uhlenbeck, who with Goudsmit introduced the electron spin in a 1925 publication, while his 1927 Ph.D. thesis on quantum statistics was much less influential. (Here is the story how two Ph.D. students discovered the electron spin, which was missed by a giant like Pauli.)
$endgroup$
Anatoly Karatsuba discovered the
Karatsuba algorithm in 1960, and reported it to Kolmogorov who published it under his (Karatsuba's) name without his knowledge. It seems fair to say that this first example of a "divide and conquer" algorithm eclipsed Karatsuba's 1966 thesis on "The method of trigonometric sums and intermediate value theorems".
For a physics example (from my own university) I note George Uhlenbeck, who with Goudsmit introduced the electron spin in a 1925 publication, while his 1927 Ph.D. thesis on quantum statistics was much less influential. (Here is the story how two Ph.D. students discovered the electron spin, which was missed by a giant like Pauli.)
edited 5 hours ago
community wiki
Carlo Beenakker
add a comment |
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I would contend that Claude Shannon's Master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1936) far overshadows his PhD thesis, "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics" (1940). I'm not exactly sure how reliable Google Scholar citation counts are, but for what it's worth, it lists 1423 citations for the former and only 89 for the latter.
EDITED TO ADD:
While Alan Turing's PhD Thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938), introduced the concept of ordinal logic and also oracle machines, I suggest that it barely compares to the impact of his earlier paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1937).
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I would contend that Claude Shannon's Master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1936) far overshadows his PhD thesis, "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics" (1940). I'm not exactly sure how reliable Google Scholar citation counts are, but for what it's worth, it lists 1423 citations for the former and only 89 for the latter.
EDITED TO ADD:
While Alan Turing's PhD Thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938), introduced the concept of ordinal logic and also oracle machines, I suggest that it barely compares to the impact of his earlier paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1937).
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I would contend that Claude Shannon's Master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1936) far overshadows his PhD thesis, "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics" (1940). I'm not exactly sure how reliable Google Scholar citation counts are, but for what it's worth, it lists 1423 citations for the former and only 89 for the latter.
EDITED TO ADD:
While Alan Turing's PhD Thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938), introduced the concept of ordinal logic and also oracle machines, I suggest that it barely compares to the impact of his earlier paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1937).
$endgroup$
I would contend that Claude Shannon's Master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1936) far overshadows his PhD thesis, "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics" (1940). I'm not exactly sure how reliable Google Scholar citation counts are, but for what it's worth, it lists 1423 citations for the former and only 89 for the latter.
EDITED TO ADD:
While Alan Turing's PhD Thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938), introduced the concept of ordinal logic and also oracle machines, I suggest that it barely compares to the impact of his earlier paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1937).
edited 3 hours ago
community wiki
3 revs
mhum
add a comment |
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Gauss defended his PhD in 1799. The topic was the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of algebra. But in 1798 he wrote Disquistiones Arithmeticae laying the foundation of modern number theory (published in 1801). Moreover, in 1796 he started his famous Daybook, which contains plenty of results of fundamental importance (for example the expression of AGM in terms of an elliptic integral).
The result he was especially proud with was the construction of the regular 17-gon (Heptadecagon)
which is obtained in 1796.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Gauss defended his PhD in 1799. The topic was the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of algebra. But in 1798 he wrote Disquistiones Arithmeticae laying the foundation of modern number theory (published in 1801). Moreover, in 1796 he started his famous Daybook, which contains plenty of results of fundamental importance (for example the expression of AGM in terms of an elliptic integral).
The result he was especially proud with was the construction of the regular 17-gon (Heptadecagon)
which is obtained in 1796.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Gauss defended his PhD in 1799. The topic was the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of algebra. But in 1798 he wrote Disquistiones Arithmeticae laying the foundation of modern number theory (published in 1801). Moreover, in 1796 he started his famous Daybook, which contains plenty of results of fundamental importance (for example the expression of AGM in terms of an elliptic integral).
The result he was especially proud with was the construction of the regular 17-gon (Heptadecagon)
which is obtained in 1796.
$endgroup$
Gauss defended his PhD in 1799. The topic was the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of algebra. But in 1798 he wrote Disquistiones Arithmeticae laying the foundation of modern number theory (published in 1801). Moreover, in 1796 he started his famous Daybook, which contains plenty of results of fundamental importance (for example the expression of AGM in terms of an elliptic integral).
The result he was especially proud with was the construction of the regular 17-gon (Heptadecagon)
which is obtained in 1796.
edited 23 mins ago
community wiki
2 revs
Alexandre Eremenko
add a comment |
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Solovay came up with his model of ZF in which all sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable in 1964, the same year that he defended his PhD thesis, which is on something else entirely (the Riemann-Roch theorem in differential geometry). I haven't been able to find an absolute statement that this was during his PhD, however.
Also, aren't these questions usually community wiki?
$endgroup$
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Solovay came up with his model of ZF in which all sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable in 1964, the same year that he defended his PhD thesis, which is on something else entirely (the Riemann-Roch theorem in differential geometry). I haven't been able to find an absolute statement that this was during his PhD, however.
Also, aren't these questions usually community wiki?
$endgroup$
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
Solovay came up with his model of ZF in which all sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable in 1964, the same year that he defended his PhD thesis, which is on something else entirely (the Riemann-Roch theorem in differential geometry). I haven't been able to find an absolute statement that this was during his PhD, however.
Also, aren't these questions usually community wiki?
$endgroup$
Solovay came up with his model of ZF in which all sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable in 1964, the same year that he defended his PhD thesis, which is on something else entirely (the Riemann-Roch theorem in differential geometry). I haven't been able to find an absolute statement that this was during his PhD, however.
Also, aren't these questions usually community wiki?
answered 5 hours ago
community wiki
Robert Furber
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
It happened afterwards
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
@AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for the correction. I'll leave the answer in case someone else matches the dates up and comes to a similar conclusion.
$endgroup$
– Robert Furber
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
$begingroup$
To confirm what Robert is saying, Solovay writes in a footnote on the first page of his paper: "The main results of this paper were proved in March-July, 1964, and were presented at the July meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at Bristol, England".
$endgroup$
– Dan Petersen
4 hours ago
add a comment |
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$begingroup$
I wouldn't know if "eclipse" is the right word here, but an example that comes to mind is Woodin.
$endgroup$
– Andrés E. Caicedo
10 hours ago
6
$begingroup$
PhD is a relatively recent innovation, especially in England. Until the mid 20 century most British mathematicians had no PhD.
$endgroup$
– Alexandre Eremenko
10 hours ago