"Turing committed suicide in 1954, by eating a cyanide-laced apple, although the circumstances of his death were ambiguous enough (deliberately) so that his mother could maintain, for her own sake, that it was an accident."
I feel that this is an unfair statement. There are lots of reasons to believe Turning's death wasn't suicide.
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period. Had he even thought he actually had a proof, he would have published it, and we would all know it was wrong.
A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia.
The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem" is precisely which false proof he most likely had.
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period.
Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted; nothing to do with when he made the claim.
I was going to make the same point. It could well have been a suicide, but the evidence is at best circumstantial, and there's fairly suggestive evidence pointing at it being accidental. I don't think it's controversial to say that no modern inquest would render a verdict of suicide given the very limited evidence that had been gathered.
(I personally think his death was an accident; probably the result if his experiments using potassium cyanide to dissolve gold to electroplate spoons. He was famously clumsy, there's evidence that the room he was using for experiments smelled of cyanide, and the autopsy found evidence more consistent with poisoning from inhalation than ingestion. And I've never found the suggestion that Turing staged his suicide to look like an accident credible; if he'd actually tried I imagine he could have done a vastly better job.)
John von Neumann -- December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957 (cancer) -- was a Hungarian and later American pure and applied mathematician, physicist, inventor and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields,[2] including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and fluid dynamics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. [1]
"A von Neumann biographer, Norman Macrae, has speculated that the cancer was caused by von Neumann's presence at the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests held in 1946 at Bikini Atoll." [2]
Tycho suddenly contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later, on 24 October 1601. According to Kepler's first hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette.
Oded Schramm died in 2008 on solo climb in Washington State. Really should have won a Fields medal for his work on SLE (Schramm-Loewner evolution), as his collaborator Wendelin Werner received.
Gareth Williams (26 September 1978 – c. 16 August 2010) was a Welsh mathematician and employee of GCHQ seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) who was found dead in suspicious circumstances at a Security Service safe house flat in Pimlico, London, on 23 August 2010. His decomposing naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom.
Philip Taylor Kramer (July 12, 1952 – February 12, 1995) was a bass guitar player for the rock group Iron Butterfly during the 1970s. After this he obtained a night school degree in aerospace engineering, he worked on the MX missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense and later in the computer industry on fractal compression, facial recognition systems, and advanced communications. His disappearance on February 12, 1995 caused a mystery lasting for years.
Hermann Minkowski. Died suddenly of appendicitis at the age of 44.
"In the early years of his scientific career, Albert Einstein considered mathematics to be a mere tool in the service of physical intuition. In later years, he came to consider mathematics as the very source of scientific creativity. A main motive behind this change was the influence of two prominent German mathematicians: David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski." [1]
Rajeev Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University whose research focused on theoretical computer science. He was an early advisor and supporter of companies including Google and PayPal, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001.
Further,
Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton home on June 5, 2009
Some members emigrated before or during the war and spread all over the world, mostly in the US. After 1945 almost none of the original members were still alive and in Poland/Ukraine.
Many of L'viv (then Lwów) professors (for example Stefan Banach, of the Banach-Tarski paradox fame) survived only because they were hired as "lice feeders" in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl institute, and he managed to persuade Germans that they need consistent data, so they can't take his feeders away just because they are Jewish or Polish.
I once had a couple of slides on Cantor->Turing->Gödel that finished of the AI101 lecture I held. One could create a narrative that their particular work lead to their unfortunate deaths and I'm pretty sure I actually read that somewhere but think it is far fetched (particularly for Turing) and didn't mention it.
That Galois story is obviously a fairy tale.
Probably the story is written by his father who is the real one behind.
Math history is full of those urban legends because its better like this. A hero of his time.
On a related note, "Dangerous Knowledge" is a great documentary "about four of the most brilliant mathematicians of all time, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, their genius, their tragic madness and their ultimate suicides". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520274/
Archimedes! Run through by a sword by an impatient soldier while he was trying to finish up a math problem instead of heeding a summons to some bureaucrat or general or something.
I don't think so - there is a widespread confusion about life expectancy. If, for example, child mortality was high compared to modern times, the life expectancy at birth was low.
However, for those who survived childhood, the life expectancy would not be very much different from modern.
Example: triplets were born, but one died at birth, another when he was 10, and another lived to 80. So, life expectancy at birth is only 30 years, but measured at five years of age it is 45 years, and measured at 20 years of age it is full 80 years.
It shows the age 30 life expectancy, in 1900 it was 35 years, so 65 year old. Compare to today which is 47 years (77 years old).
There are life tables for historical periods, but the modern data is likely more reliable and still shows quite some difference.
Your link makes a good point about life expectancy at birth not being the right measure, but there is a very real expansion in life expectancy that has taken place. I guess infectious disease control probably pulled a lot of that expansion into the last 100 years.
Maurice Audin was a young Mathematician who died in 1957 in Algiers under torture by the French Military because he supported the Algerian independence cause.
Issac Newton is on this list, his death at 84 hardly qualifies as unfortunate or unfitting. I mean, even today, 84 is well above life expectancy in most of the world.
40 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck#Retirem...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Faudree
I feel that this is an unfair statement. There are lots of reasons to believe Turning's death wasn't suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death
I also think that Fermat deserves an honourable mention for particularly poor timing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem
A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia.
The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem" is precisely which false proof he most likely had.
Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted; nothing to do with when he made the claim.
(I personally think his death was an accident; probably the result if his experiments using potassium cyanide to dissolve gold to electroplate spoons. He was famously clumsy, there's evidence that the room he was using for experiments smelled of cyanide, and the autopsy found evidence more consistent with poisoning from inhalation than ingestion. And I've never found the suggestion that Turing staged his suicide to look like an accident credible; if he'd actually tried I imagine he could have done a vastly better job.)
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-stre...
"A von Neumann biographer, Norman Macrae, has speculated that the cancer was caused by von Neumann's presence at the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests held in 1946 at Bikini Atoll." [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Later_life
Tycho suddenly contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later, on 24 October 1601. According to Kepler's first hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams
Philip Taylor Kramer (July 12, 1952 – February 12, 1995) was a bass guitar player for the rock group Iron Butterfly during the 1970s. After this he obtained a night school degree in aerospace engineering, he worked on the MX missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense and later in the computer industry on fractal compression, facial recognition systems, and advanced communications. His disappearance on February 12, 1995 caused a mystery lasting for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer
"In the early years of his scientific career, Albert Einstein considered mathematics to be a mere tool in the service of physical intuition. In later years, he came to consider mathematics as the very source of scientific creativity. A main motive behind this change was the influence of two prominent German mathematicians: David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski." [1]
[1] http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowsk...
Rajeev Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University whose research focused on theoretical computer science. He was an early advisor and supporter of companies including Google and PayPal, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001.
Further,
Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton home on June 5, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Motwani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ruziewicz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82odzimierz_Sto%C5%BCek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Auerbach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kaczmarz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_%C5%81omnicki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Schauder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Saks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Mazurkiewicz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Lindenbaum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein_%28mathematici...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Marcinkiewicz
Some members emigrated before or during the war and spread all over the world, mostly in the US. After 1945 almost none of the original members were still alive and in Poland/Ukraine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_of_lice#Lw.C3.B3w_academ...
Thanks for mentioning the documentary: I will check it out...
However, for those who survived childhood, the life expectancy would not be very much different from modern.
Example: triplets were born, but one died at birth, another when he was 10, and another lived to 80. So, life expectancy at birth is only 30 years, but measured at five years of age it is 45 years, and measured at 20 years of age it is full 80 years.
This short article gives some explanation. http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-...
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html#w...
It shows the age 30 life expectancy, in 1900 it was 35 years, so 65 year old. Compare to today which is 47 years (77 years old).
There are life tables for historical periods, but the modern data is likely more reliable and still shows quite some difference.
Your link makes a good point about life expectancy at birth not being the right measure, but there is a very real expansion in life expectancy that has taken place. I guess infectious disease control probably pulled a lot of that expansion into the last 100 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton