About the title

About the title

I changed the title of the blog on March 20, 2013 (it used to have the title “Notes of an owl”). This was my immediate reaction to the news the T. Gowers was presenting to the public the works of P. Deligne on the occasion of the award of the Abel prize to Deligne in 2013 (by his own admission, T. Gowers is not qualified to do this).

The issue at hand is not just the lack of qualification; the real issue is that the award to P. Deligne is, unfortunately, the best compensation to the mathematical community for the 2012 award of Abel prize to Szemerédi. I predicted Deligne before the announcement on these grounds alone. I would prefer if the prize to P. Deligne would be awarded out of pure appreciation of his work.



I believe that mathematicians urgently need to stop the growth of Gowers's influence, and, first of all, his initiatives in mathematical publishing. I wrote extensively about the first one; now there is another: to take over the arXiv overlay electronic journals. The same arguments apply.



Now it looks like this title is very good, contrary to my initial opinion. And there is no way back.
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The twist ending. 2. A Cambridge don

Previous post: The twist ending. 1.

Mel Nathanson made a right on the target comment "Mel Nathanson Says, July 8, 2012, 9:14 a.m." in Gowers's blog about ethical issues stemming from the fact that Timothy Gowers is a professor at Cambridge University, of which the publishing house Cambridge University Press, the publisher of his new journals, is a for-profit branch. The university as a whole is non-profit, i.e. cannot distribute profits to people not employed by it.

Next post: The twist ending. 3. R. Kirby.


Behind the jump break I posted the complete text of Mel Nathanson's comment as an insurance against the disappearance of the original. Nothing on the web is really permanent, and I hope that Professor Mel Nathanson will not object to this and will not consider this to be a copyright infringement (I am relying on the "fair use" doctrine, but will remove the text at his request immediately).