| Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.research,sci.math
Path: decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!nada.kth.se!bjornl
Subject: Re: Nobel Prizes
Posted: 6 Nov 88 21:15:05 GMT
Organization: The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm
Xref: decwrl sci.physics:5099 sci.research:567 sci.math:5072
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 3 Nov 88 21:09:24 GMT
Just a few comments on an interesting posting...
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Paul R.
Chernoff) writes:
%In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac)
%writes:
%>I heard a story that Nobel omitted prizes in astronomy and mathematics
%>in order to prevent an astronomer/mathematician named Mittag Lefler
%>(spelling is almost certainly wrong) from ever getting one. ...
%Having spent some real effort to investigate this story, I am
%certain that it is totally false. ...
%The facts are these:
....
%2. Gosta Mittag-Leffler was an important mathematician in Sweden
%in the late 19th-early 20th century. He was the founder of the
%journal Acta Mathematica, played an important role in helping the
%career of Sonya Kovalevskaya, and was eventually head of the
%Stockholm Hogskola, a technical institute. However, it seems
%highly unlikely that he would have been a leading candidate for
%an early Nobel Prize in mathematics, had there been one -- there
%were guys like Poincare and Hilbert around, after all.
(...Long and interesting explanation of the unlikeliness of Nobel omitting a
prize in mathematics for this reason deleted...)
"Stockholm Hogskola" (umlaut on the "o" in "Hog-") must refer to Kungliga
Tekniska Hogskolan (The Royal Institute of Technology), located in
Stockholm. I work there myself. Interestingly, I heard this story, about
Nobel omitting a prize in mathematics because of animosity towards
Mittag-Leffler, LAST WEEK, at the lunch cafeteria. Your argumentation
against the likelihood of this is, however, quite convincing. But old
stories never seem to die, especially at a place where people counted on
Nobel's funds when he died....
Bjorn Lisper
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| I thought noters might be interested in the following. Although it does not
shed any new light on the "gossip", it does have some interesting details
on the woman in question and her life.
=====================================================================
Extracted without permission from an article by M.A.B. Deakin (Monash
University) in the magazine "Function".
"The Nobel Prizes, announced annually, recognise excellence in Chemistry,
Physics, Physiology and Medicine, Literature, Peace and (more recently)
Economics. Except for the last of these, the money for the prizes comes from
the estate of the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel
(1833-1896). Nobel studied, patented, and manufactured explosives, being most
remembered as the inventor of dynamite. He funded his prizes from the wealth
these activities brought him, and did so in the hope of leaving a lasting
legacy of service and benefit to humanity.
Many fields of endeavour are not recognised, and among these is Mathematics.
Why this is so is not really known. There does seem to be some evidence that
Nobel at one point considered including Mathematics among the fields chosen for
the awards.
One widely believed explanation for this change of heart (if in fact there was
one) is his bad relations with the Swedish mathematician Mittag-Leffler. Magnus
Gustaf (or G�sta) Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927) was a mathematician of some note,
nowadays better remembered perhaps as an organiser and editor than for his
technical contributions to Mathematics itself. He had studied under one of the
very greatest of all mathematicians, the German Karl Theodor Wilhelm
Weierstrass (1815-1897). Weierstrass made major contributions to calculus,
geometry and approximation theory. He also changed for all time the standard of
mathematical rigour and the concept of mathematical proof. Mittag-Leffler was
one of many students who spread Weierstrass's influence and so helped to form
the shape of modern mathematics.
Had there been a Nobel prize for Mathematics, it is just conceivable that
Mittag-Leffler might, one year, have won it. Almost certainly, as the leading
Swedish mathematician of his day, he would have played a part in administering
it. So it could be that Nobel, if he were ill-disposed towards Mittag-Leffler,
might have forestalled both these eventualities by deciding to scrap all ideas
of a Nobel Prize for Mathematics.
The alleged quarrel between Nobel and Mittag-Leffler is supposed to have been
the result of their rivalry for the affections of another mathematician: Sonya
Kovalevsky. This story is in print: Solomon W. Golomb tells it in the journal
'Cryptologia' (Jan.1980) and [a Dutch magazine] 'Pythagoras' ran it in December
1983, and a translation of Pythagoras' article appeared in the Winter 1984
issue of the Belgian 'Maths Jeunes'."
"Sonya Kovalevsky (1850-1891) was a Russian who escaped that country by the
expedient of contracting a marriage of convenience and so being allowed to go
abroad to enter a university. This device was the only one available at the
time, and women seeking education had no other recourse but to adopt it. The
couple did go abroad and, in large measure, drifted apart as such couples were
expected to do - she to go to study with Weierstrass.
Her difficulties as a woman were enormous, and even Weierstrass's powerful help
did not always win the day for her. Eventually she resumed her married life,
returned to Russia and bore a daughter. The couple, however, were in deep
financial trouble, and this phase of Sonya's life ended abruptly with the
consequent suicide of her husband in 1883.
She turned, in this crisis, to Weierstrass and he contacted Mittag-Leffler, who
offered her a lectureship, later upgraded to a professorship, in Stockholm. She
thus became the world's second woman professor of Mathematics (after Marie
Agnesi[DG: see below]). Her contributions to mathematics were very significant,
involving calculus, mechanics and the theory of Saturn's rings.
She also wrote several novels and was a political radical, especially in the
area of women's rights. Even by today's standards, let alone those of 100 years
ago, she would be classed as a radical feminist. Her early death was a great
loss to the world.
Now this much is fact - but what of the story of her amorous liaisons with
Nobel and Mittag-Leffler? Beyond the obvious - that the three were often in the
same city at the same time, and so the men could have fallen out over the
woman, there is very little evidence I have seen to support it. Certainly she
was a colleague of Mittag-Leffler's and was in his debt for getting her her
job, but that's not the same thing as having an affaire with him.
Earlier, indeed, she had been very close to Weierstrass, and malicious tongues
had wagged, but it would seem that the gossip (which hurt Weierstrass very
deeply) was unfounded and that the relationship was purely platonic. Certainly
Mittag-Leffler, writing late in this life on the two and their relationship,
leads one to this view. We may perhaps take the same view on her alleged
affaire with Mittag-Leffler.
As for Nobel, although he never married, there was a number of women in this
life, and his official biography deals with these relationships in considerable
detail. Nowhere, however, does it mention Sonya Kovalevsky at all!"
[Maria Agnesi (1718-1799) was appointed as a professor of Mathematics at the
University of Bologna. However she taught no students and drew no pay and lived
in Milan. The post was evidently an honorary one.]
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