My mother was a Ph.D. in Statistics from Columbia. Worked for NHTSA doing safety regulatory stuff. Loved her job. Loved her field. To wit:
My earliest childhood memories are of yellow pads of paper my sister and I referred to as being full of "greek heiroglyphics". These were problems she was solving from the Mathematical Monthly. She subscribed to the thing from before I was born until she died.
When she went to publish her doctoral thesis she her advisor gave her a piece of bad news. 1) This big high muckity muck math guy from the USSR just published a paper where he says "There is no A that is B" and her paper said "Choose and A that is also B". and 2) The advisor was going on sabbatical monday.
She had to pull two all nighters and found an example that was A and B. Gave it in her paper.
Fast forward 6 mos later or so: A guy named Petrov, another big math guy from the USSR was in NYC for a UN function and stopped by her City College office to say he really enjoyed her paper. Turns out he didn't like the first guy, and had written to the journal that pubished his paper questioning the assumption Mom had to blow away. Mom was 5'2" tall, 31, part-time, and very pregnant with me. I'm sure Petrov never let the first guy (whose name I CANNOT remember) forget he was contradicted successfully by an American Housewife.
What amazed me was Mom never told me the story until I was in my 20's. She didn't think it was that big of a deal. That's like David not mentioning Goliath to his kids...
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Date: 2007-04-13 01:19 am (UTC)My mother was a Ph.D. in Statistics from Columbia. Worked for NHTSA doing safety regulatory stuff. Loved her job. Loved her field. To wit:
My earliest childhood memories are of yellow pads of paper my sister and I referred to as being full of "greek heiroglyphics". These were problems she was solving from the Mathematical Monthly. She subscribed to the thing from before I was born until she died.
When she went to publish her doctoral thesis she her advisor gave her a piece of bad news. 1) This big high muckity muck math guy from the USSR just published a paper where he says "There is no A that is B" and her paper said "Choose and A that is also B". and 2) The advisor was going on sabbatical monday.
She had to pull two all nighters and found an example that was A and B. Gave it in her paper.
Fast forward 6 mos later or so: A guy named Petrov, another big math guy from the USSR was in NYC for a UN function and stopped by her City College office to say he really enjoyed her paper. Turns out he didn't like the first guy, and had written to the journal that pubished his paper questioning the assumption Mom had to blow away. Mom was 5'2" tall, 31, part-time, and very pregnant with me. I'm sure Petrov never let the first guy (whose name I CANNOT remember) forget he was contradicted successfully by an American Housewife.
What amazed me was Mom never told me the story until I was in my 20's. She didn't think it was that big of a deal. That's like David not mentioning Goliath to his kids...