Word: mathematician
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Veganism is an extreme form of vegetarianism, and though the term was coined in 1944, the concept of flesh-avoidance can be traced back to ancient Indian and eastern Mediterranean societies. Vegetarianism is first mentioned by the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos around 500 BCE. In addition to his theorem about right triangles, Pythagoras promoted benevolence among all species, including humans. Followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism also advocated vegetarianism, believing that humans should not inflict pain on other animals...
...their feats: slowing the speed of light (optical physicist Lene Hau, 2001), mapping the human genome (geneticist Eric Lander, 1987), penning acclaimed novels (Cormac McCarthy, 1981; the recently deceased David Foster Wallace, 1997), scheming to save our threatened fisheries (lobsterman Ted Ames, 2005) and solving Fermat's Last Theorem (mathematician Andrew Wiles, 1997). Seven have nabbed the Nobel Prize, including geneticist Barbara McClintock (1981) and former U.S. poet laureate Joseph Brodsky (1981). Others have won Pulitzers, Fields Medals -the math world's top honor - and National Book Awards. The chosen few are informed by an "out-of-the-blue" phone...
...Secondly, there's India's fitful, parallel struggle as a nation. As a mathematician, Suri is fond of symmetries, and India's political tumult - from bloody partition through to the difficult years of Indira Gandhi's Emergency - backdrops Meera's narrative in sometimes contrived, sometimes clever ways...
...voracious consumer of puzzles and a brilliant mathematician, University of California professor David Gale was so passionate about math that he dreamed of creating an interactive museum dedicated to the subject. But he is best known for the matching algorithm he created with colleague Lloyd Shapley that was first applied to romantic pairs: an elegant method to determine couples in which both partners prefer each other to other members of a group. Among several applications, the algorithm has since been used to match students to high schools and helped establish the protocol still used to assign new doctors to hospital...
...Ericsson's primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion - repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician - that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding. You like the Tuesday New York Times crossword? You have...