When I was a student at a leading American university one of my mathematics
professors answered the above question in class. He claimed that the Swedish
mathematician Gosta Magnus Mittag-Leffler had run off with Alfred Nobel's
wife. Supposedly, later in revenge Nobel refused to endow one of his prizes
in mathematics. I loved repeating this juicy story, but my faith in it was
somewhat shaken when I found out that Nobel had never married! A Swedish
version of the story even made it into one of Howard Eves's collections of
mathematical anecdotes (p.13O of Mathematical Circles, Quadrants III, 1969).
According to this version Mittag-Leffler, in the process of accumulating his
own considerable wealth, antagonized Nobel. Nobel, afraid that Mittag-Leffler
as the leading Swedish mathematician might win a Nobel prize in mathematics,
then refused to institute such a prize.
Both versions of the myth were debunked in the definitive article pithy
"Is There No Nobel Prize in Mathematics?" by Lars Garding and Lars Hormander
(pgs. 73-4 of Mathematical Intelligencer 7:3, 1985). The authors point out
that Mittag-Leffler and Nobel had almost no relation to each other; Nobel
emigrated from Sweden in 1865 when Mittag-Leffler was a student and rarely
returned to visit. Garding and Hormander state, "The true answer to the
question (of the title) is that, for natural reasons, the thought of a prize
in mathematics never entered Nobel's mind." Nobel's final will of 1895
bequeathed $9,OOO,OOO for a foundation whose income would support five annual
prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine-physiology, literature, and peace.
Four of the original five prizes were in fields which were close to Nobel's
own interests, medicine being the exception.
A sixth Nobel prize in economic science was added in 1969. The addition of
this new Nobel prize suggests the possibility at some future date of a
seventh Nobel prize. With the blossoming of computer science, statistics,
and applied mathematics in addition to mathematics itself, a strong case
could be made for a new Nobel prize in the mathematical sciences. Perhaps
some Math Horizons reader, upon making his fortune,... of course, there are
the Fields Medals that are awarded at each International Congress of
Mathematicians. But these are given only every four years to a mathematician
under forty, and they are not well-known outside of mathematical circles.
There is a larger question raised by the fact that apocryphal stories,
such as the Nobel-math-prize myth, seem to have a life of their own. Are
mathematicians justified in bending historical truth in order to serve
laudable aims, such as illustrating that mathematicians are real people
or interesting students in mathematics? Another example of this tendency
concerns the famous story of Gauss's discovery as a ten-year old boy of a
simple method for summing an arithmetic series. (Multiply the number of
terms by the average of the smallest and largest terms.) Most mathematicians
who teach will assert that the problem given to Gauss by his tyrannical
school teacher was to sum the integers from 1 to 1OO. In fact, Gauss was
given a more difficult problem "of the following sort, 81297 + 81495 +
81693 +... + lOO899, where the step from one number to the next is the same
all along (here 198), and a given number of terms (here 1OO) are to be
added." (p. 221 of E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, 1937). With this
particular example it's easy to maintain historical truth by telling
students that Gauss was given a problem like summing the integers from 1
to 1OO.
Mathematicians seem less likely to bend mathematical truth than historical
truth. In this situation there is one technique which outstanding expositors
like Paul Halmos have used in simplifying difficult mathematics. Halmos will
either announce up front or in passing that he is going to lie a little.
Perhaps mathematicians might use this technique when they find it necessary
to bend historical truth.
Peter Ross is a professor of mathematics at Santa Clara University. This
article was taken from Math Horizons Nov. '95, pg. 9.
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Reference: http://forum.swarthmore.edu/social/articles/ross.html