This fall I will apply for tenure track jobs, to 'officially' be a math professor. It feels like a very grown up thing to be. In getting ready to apply, I am often evaluating myself against the competition, either by looking at successful applicant's c.v.'s on mathjobs.org, or comparing myself to current professors (I do a similar thing when applying for/getting rejected from NSF).
One area where I sometimes find myself lacking is the importance† of my research. All of my work to date has been in water waves, at a rather small scale, where surface tension is an important effect. I have an uncle who is a naval architect; he asks me every Thanksgiving why people care about capillary wave ripples. They are clearly not important for boats, maybe insects? The best response I have is that these waves are a natural phenomenon, so it would be nice to understand them. A very pure science answer.
I think that the nerdiest of the nerds from middle school are well represented in Math. You know the type - making up their own language, wearing Spock ears, rolling 20-sided dice in the hall. How much the jargon of math is a result of childhood dreams of speaking elvish?@
Sometimes I wonder if it is a closed minded question to ask 'what is the application of this' to a scientist. Isn't the application just discovery? As much as I would like to tout the 'beauty of the science' as a reason to study something,‡ I don't believe this. I was reading JSE's blog today, where he spoke of some talks at a recent number theory conference. In JSE's field I really don't know the application*. In fact I would be hard pressed to tell you what a modern number theorist studies.% I don't speak their language#.
I think that the nerdiest of the nerds from middle school are well represented in Math. You know the type - making up their own language, wearing Spock ears, rolling 20-sided dice in the hall. How much the jargon of math is a result of childhood dreams of speaking elvish?@
† NSF buzzword = impact
‡ NSF buzzword = intellectual merit
*It can't all be for cryptography
‡ NSF buzzword = intellectual merit
*It can't all be for cryptography
%(numbers duh!)
#Not that number theory is special in this regard, I am sure I would have the same problem if I read a logic blog. Probably JSE's audience would think I was speaking Greek if I posted about my work here.
@Not trying to be a hater here, I played magic cards in 7th grade; the title of this page is s quote from my cousin about me two weeks ago.
2 comments:
At first I was approaching the importance of my field to be applications to other sciences. Instead, my advisor started me thinking and asking the question, "why does the field of mathematics care?" Sometimes I like to point out that the questions other scientists want answered are very very hard questions. What do you do when you want to solve a very very hard calculus question? You solve a simpler one first with easier functions and work your way up to the hard ones.
Usually, if this doesn't satisfy them and they're not real scientists, I pull out some bullshit about how my field is related to Einstein's theory of relativity and the Einstein constant. I don't know anything about Einstein's theories, but they don't either. They just have heard it enough in popular culture to take it on faith that it's important.
I think that from the perspective of the job market (i.e., definitely not in the long term or in any more meaningful sense), the "importance" of your work comes down to how interesting the two dozen most influential people in your immediate field consider it.
Good mathematics is largely a matter of taste, so there is something to this. Nevertheless, mathematics is certainly faddish. Everyone thought finite group theory was hot shit thirty years ago. I don't dare predict what people will care about thirty years from now. Hopefully I'll have tenure by then ;)
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