David Fowler | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 13 April 2004 Warwick, England | (aged 66)
Alma mater | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge |
Occupation | Mathematician |
Known for | Greek mathematics |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Manchester University University of Warwick |
David Herbert Fowler (28 April 1937 – 13 April 2004) was a historian of Greek mathematics who published work on pre-Eudoxian ratio theory (using the process he called anthyphairesis). He disputed the standard story of Greek mathematical discovery, in which the discovery of the phenomenon of incommensurability came as a shock.
Fowler was also the translator of René Thom's book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis from French (Stabilité strukturelle et morphogénèse) into English.
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Transcription
I'm tempted to say smart, creative people have no particularly different set of character traits than the rest of us except for being smart and creative, and those being character traits. Then, on the other hand, I wrote a biography of Richard Feynman and a biography of Isaac Newton. Now, there are two great scientific geniuses whose characters were in some superficial ways completely different. Isaac Newton was solitary, antisocial, I think unpleasant, bitter, fought with his friends as much as with his enemies. Richard Feynman was gregarious, funny, a great dancer, loved women. Isaac Newton, I believe, never had sex. Richard Feynman, I believe, had plenty. So you can't generalize there. On the other hand, they were both, as I tried to get in their heads, understand their minds, the nature of their genius, I sort of felt I was seeing things that they had in common, and they were things that had to do with aloneness. Newton was much more obviously alone than Feynman, but Feynman didn't particularly work well with others. He was known as a great teacher, but he wasn't a great teacher, I don't think, one on one. I think he was a great lecturer. I think he was a great communicator. But when it came time to make the great discoveries of science, he was alone in his head. Now, when I say he, I mean both Feynman and Newton, and this applies, also, I think, to the geniuses that I write about in The Information, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Ada Byron. They all had the ability to concentrate with a sort of intensity that is hard for mortals like me to grasp, a kind of passion for abstraction that doesn't lend itself to easy communication, I don't think.
References
- Obituary in The Guardian, 3 May 2004 by Christopher Zeeman.
- Obituary in The Independent, 24 May 2004.
External links
- Bibliography
- Book Review by Fernando Q. Gouvêa of The Mathematics of Plato's Academy
- Memorial symposium organized in his honor at Warwick, 9 November 2004.