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+1. That's one screenshot for the gallery!
Heh. How about this one?
Do we actually have a gallery? That would be kind of nice.
I used the term 'gallery' figuratively, but I did keep a screenshot. So if a gallery is forthcoming, I'd gladly contribute it :)
So now we just need to get Perelman and Wiles >=)
Then we're set =p.
Here's another recent example from Dick Palais, though I guess he didn't really so much endorse the answer.
Here is, I think, another example:
Many seem to be gratified to see "OP-meet-the-real-guy-of-the-question."
@Elohemahab Solomon, I think what does it is seeing that names one reads on book covers correspond to actual humans.
@Yemon: it was so much more awesome due to F.Voloch's comment.
My question about generalizations of a Knutson-Tao theorem got two different answers from Knutson and Tao: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/31475/singular-values-of-matrix-sums
@Yemon, Willie: amazing! It is actually quite scary to think of who are lurking on MO!
John Mackay asking «What do we mean by 'sporadic' ?»: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2427/why-are-there-only-a-finite-number-of-sporadic-simple-groups/6771#6771 :)
Are we sure that's actually John McKay?
Just as sure that you are Qiaochu Yuan!
Another example here: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/13112/
@ Mariano, I can't help posting this quotation though I do not agree at times with it.
Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté. -Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet (b. 1939)
Margaret Atwood obviously fell victim to the confusion over words that can have multiple meanings, thinking that the word "like" in "to like an author's work" means the same as in "to like duck paté". On the other hand, maybe that is indeed how she perused literary works - by devouring them. In that case, I agree that the quoted observation is accurate, since it would only make sense if she liked the author rather than just his work.
I like duck paté although I am not enthusiatic at meeting the source; I would meet the chef (= the author) rather than the duck. The meta is about "getting truth at first hand". "Meeting on Mathoverflow" is something very special, and seems to have nothing to do with what people usually understand as "meeting". Most of MOtizens are anonyms (which make me thinking about those poor no-name ducks again).
Yesterday night I spent reading over a guest professor's paper which was to be presented by him today. I had some difficulties understanding some formulas in the paper. However, today after seeing it lectured on by the author himself, I felt the true happiness people who evidenced such bliss here felt. Two observations: (1) Researching math with primary sources makes the math tractable and understandable. (2) Having an idea and explaining it to others in black and white can be really hard. As I saw today, all the details mentioned in the seminar could have well made it to the paper, only that it will make it a "tome" or "a paper for beginners".
Continuing in this vein, Mnev on Mnev, citing Mnev.
@David: in regards to the question and the answer, you can extend that to "Mnev on Mnev, citing Mnev, who cites Mnev, and Mnev, and Vakil, and Lombardi-Mnev-Roy, and others," ... which probably is "for the win" =p (I hope no one is offended!)
Jim Humphreys' very interesting answer is not the accepted answer to Motivating the Casimir element, which is more-or-less a complaint about Humphreys' proof of Weyl's complete reducibility theorem.
One of the more amusing ones -- Noam Elkies on the subject of whether or not Elkies was a musician before he was a mathematician.
Bill Johnson on the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma: minimum space dimension to place n-points knowing pairwise distances.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but something about this thread makes me a bit uncomfortable. I find it hard to put into words, but it's something to do with the idea that a piece of mathematics might belong to someone, and it's something to do with the concept of celebrity.
Of course, I'd be pretty excited if I asked a question about Serre's work and Serre turned up to answer it. And I appreciate that it's wise for MO to keep track of success stories, because maybe in future it's going to have to apply for funding. And the original Green-Tao thing was funny. But... well, here's a story. A friend of mine is at the same institution as a very famous mathematician, who I'll call X. My friend tells me that X has very mixed feelings about his fame, because it means that people are too scared to talk to him. He just wants to interact like an ordinary mathematician, bounce ideas around, have conversations in a relaxed manner, but this doesn't happen because people know who he is and therefore don't act naturally.
From what my friend says, I'm sure that if X were on MO, the last thing he'd want is for people to make a fuss about it. There's zero chance that they wouldn't, which I think is a shame. In X's case, and I'm sure in the case of many other mathematicians of a shy-ish nature, the right thing to do would be to treat him just like anyone else.
+1 to Tom Leinster.
Wow, never thought about that, Tom! Good one.
Rota wrote somewhere that when an illustrious mathematician reaches a certain age, he is no longer treated as a person, but as an institution. (I take it he is speaking from direct experience!) Some people have an easier time adapting to that than others.
Regarding Tom Leinster's comment, I'm reminded of a paragraph from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. Speaking of Feynman,
Bohr said to his son, "Remember the name of that little fellow in the back over there? He's the only guy who's not afraid of me, and will say when I've got a crazy idea. So next time when we want to discuss ideas, we're not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy and we'll talk with him first."
In case anyone still looks at this thread, an example from a sibling site: there are a couple of answers by Peter Shor on Shor's algorithm on cstheory.se.
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