Word: mathematician
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...Yang, 34, was born in Hofei in Anhwei province, the son of a mathematician now teaching in Shanghai. He moved to Kunming when the Japanese invaded the north, and got his master's degree from National Tsinghua University. In 1945 he came to the U.S. (on a Tsinghua scholarship) and got his doctorate in 1948 at the University of Chicago. Since 1949 Dr. Yang has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where his office has a single decoration, a small picture of Einstein...
...present high school curriculum in mathematics," said Howard F. Fehr of Columbia Teachers College, "is outmoded, oriented to 19th century mathematics and physics," and completely fails to relate what it teaches with the total structure of modern mathematics. "Any 17th century mathematician, reappearing upon earth today, could enter most classrooms in our high schools and, without any preparation, teach the present traditional curriculum, so far is it behind the times...
...self-contained, self-sustaining, and almost self-generative." A small body of professors, combined with a relatively small group of students, or members, can create a community of mutual discussion and consultation in which the entire field comes under surveillance. The Institute claims with almost complete justification, "A mathematician may come to the Institute and be quite confident that he can find out anything really important in current work in the field...
...final consideration involved in the choice of fields centers around the opportunity which the small, isolated institute community can provide a scholar. The advantages which the mathematician and the theoretical physicist can derive from informal consultation and reflective study are manifold. The historian's need for this same community of scholarship, although not so great as that of the mathematician, is nevertheless considerable. Also, the fact that foundations and governments are rather reluctant to spend much money on historical projects made the initial Board of Trustees feel that the Institute might do a great service by making some...
...recent history of the Institute there are two striking examples of this educational theory in practice. The first is the Institute's abandoning the Electronic Computer Project. This project was begun in 1946 by John van Neumann as an attempt to give the mathematician and physicist a high speed computer. At first the task was novel and presented many high-level problems which only a mathematician and physicist of van Neumann's maturity and brilliance could cope with. In 1952, the machine was completed, and applied physicists in various companies began to improve upon the original until the Institute decided...