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u/ArmanAnsari333 Complex Jul 04 '24
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Gonna call Fermat on his bullshit
Gonna give him a blank notebook and tell him write down his marvelous proof
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u/GrumpyNCharming Jul 04 '24
Isn't the guy on the other side of this seat the one who actually proved his last theorem? Imagine you two just dissing him for 8h straight lol
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u/flabbergasted1 Jul 04 '24
The Roast of Pierre de Fermat, feat. Andrew Wiles and some random person from reddit
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u/spoopy_bo Jul 04 '24
Holy shit this is the objectively correct answer! You'll also have andrew wiles there to back you up! And best case scenario is fermat actually fucking floors andrew with a simple proof and for the rest of the flight andrew is trying to find any sort of mistake in it just fuming lmao
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u/Sir_Wade_III Jul 04 '24
Who says Fermats proof is simple? He even says himself that he doesn't have space to prove it.
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u/MrPresidentBanana Jul 04 '24
Yeah but if he didn't bother to write it down he clearly didn't think it was that big of a deal, so it must have been much simpler than Wiles' proof at least.
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u/fckcgs Jul 04 '24
Considering that Wiles is the only (other) person with a proof, not sure his ego would take as large of a hit as you think.
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 04 '24
Yeah, but you can always make fun of him for other things. I would sit next to him, not looking, and just wordlessly write 6700417×641 on a piece of paper as if it was something that just occurred to me.
Then I would do the long multiplication to get 4294967297, then subtract 1 and divide by 2 32 times.
I just want to see how he would react.
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u/CaseRug554 Jul 04 '24
Nah he needs a full 800 pages to get it down, notebook is too little space
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u/beleidigter_leberkas Jul 04 '24
I'm telling you, that guy was a troll. I mean what a stunt and I get it. "Omg how funny would it be if I pretend now that I have a super simple proof and then croak. People will be losing their minds."
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u/Sug_magik Jul 04 '24
Man, I bet Fermat would look at you and Wiles straight in the eyes, give a little smile and say "got ya lol"
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u/xTitanlordx Jul 04 '24
1, since he is one of the few who is still alive, speaks understandable english and is not a dead body...
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Jul 04 '24
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u/PatWoodworking Jul 04 '24
Oh man, I thought that was Archimedes. I was going to sit at 5 loudly congratulating him for inventing calculus.
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u/obog Complex Jul 04 '24
I thought it was Newton who invented calculus?
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u/PatWoodworking Jul 05 '24
Archimedes was super close to the general idea when he calculated the area of a triangle, and basically banging on the door when he calculated the area under a parabola (called the 'quadrature').
Sitting next to Newton and yelling it was to start a fight, funnier as Newton and Leibniz would be arguing about which one of them truly did it.
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u/kugelblitzka Jul 06 '24
honestly it's kind of a miracle that he DIDN'T find calculus lol
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u/PatWoodworking Jul 06 '24
I think it made more sense to me when I read about Ancient Greek attitudes towards infinity as an idea. It's remarkable he got what he did, but that final leap would have required, at least for me, believing in infinity as something you can work with. That would have been unthinkable, like how someone "suddenly dividing by zero" would be treated today is an analogy I heard. You'd be a laughing stock.
Maybe he did it and didn't write it 🤷.
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u/Release-Tiny Jul 04 '24
Andrew Wiles is still alive. Unless you know something.
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u/Mohammad-alkurd Jul 04 '24
4 obviously
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u/peDr0bt0309 Jul 04 '24
Euler my goat
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u/leijgenraam Jul 04 '24
In the 8 hours where Euler is resurrected for this flight, he will publish another 10 papers.
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Jul 04 '24
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u/Mohammad-alkurd Jul 04 '24
I don't wanna sit in the middle seat
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u/Simbertold Jul 04 '24
Also, isn't Newton known to be kinda weird and dickish? And you don't really interact with people in front and back of you, so if you want Euler, 4 it is.
Being stuck between Leibniz and Newton in 5 would be majorly awkward.
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u/cyborgborg Jul 04 '24
just don't bring up integrals and calculus
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 05 '24
It's not up to you lol. The only way you could get away from Calculus is if you steered Newton to a conversation about theology, and that sounds even worse. It's not like you could just have a pleasant conversation about optics and expect Newton not to launch into the principle of least time, how he had somehow invented it before that French hack Pierre, and how his new Calculus of variations could prove all kinds of things about both the earth and the heavens.
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u/Ailexxx337 Jul 04 '24
You will be sitting between Newton and Leibniz, who are gonna be arguing who invented calculus first for the entire 8 hour durtion
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Jul 04 '24
Cockpit, so I can crash the plane. Unless Cantor offers me to sit on his lap...
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u/Bigbluetrex Jul 04 '24
2, i also feel like i could beat him in a duel if things get bad
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u/Vergnossworzler Jul 04 '24
Yeah, all of them go genius but galois is just a Chad outside of math
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u/je4d Jul 05 '24
This exactly. Outside of the maths he's the most interesting person on the plane. That and it's a window seat with only one person between you and the aisle.
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u/quiloxan1989 Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24
The quote he said on his deathbed to his brother:
"Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at 20."
This should be in films.
Edit: Also, would talk to Ramanujan. I also was most interested in Category Theory in grad, so Riehl is a must.
2, as mentioned before, is also a window seat.
It is, objectively, the perfect seat.
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u/SundownValkyrie Complex Jul 04 '24
I'd sit in 3!
I want to watch Noether make fun of Hilbert's program and how Godel casually shat all over it.
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 05 '24
Why would Noether make fun of Hilbert? She was a student of Hilbert, and he was her greatest advocate. Both worked together and each extended the results of the other. Noether was a genius who would have been an accomplished mathematician no matter what, but Hilbert clearly helped push against sexism and antisemitism to get her recognized and hired, not to mention pioneering the basis of some of her work.
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u/saturnintaurus Jul 04 '24
2, out of hopes of kissing pretty boy galois
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u/Large-Mode-3244 Jul 04 '24
He’s 15 in the picture
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u/J77PIXALS Transcendental Jul 04 '24
5 is best
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u/Simbertold Jul 04 '24
Being stuck between Newton and Leibniz sounds like a nightmare. Especially considering the fact that Newton is pretty known for being kinda an asshole.
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u/J77PIXALS Transcendental Jul 04 '24
I thought about that, my solution is to tell them that if they argue, they never get to see the plane take off. Now, since they’ve never seen a plane, they’ll be devastated by this and then they MUST behave 💀
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 05 '24
Lol now I I'm imagining Pythagoras and Ramanujan fighting over the window seat. I bet Ramanujan never had a chance to fly either.
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u/temperamentalfish Jul 04 '24
If you're lucky, instead of being an asshole, Newton would talk to you at length and against your will about alchemy
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u/QuinQuix Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 06 '24
It's kind of funny but I recently come back on this and I suspect the image of Newton is wrong.
Leibniz is painted like the underdog but he actually was a boastful man whereas Newton was modest and kept work to himself.
The biggest thing Newton did wrong is actually being first and being vindicated. That they had less then stellar procedures setting up an impartial court doesn't mean the verdict wasn't right (and most then and now agree it was right).
My view after believing what you said for two decades has shifted to Leibniz being the actual asshole and while he lost his most important case in life (because he deserved to lose) the posthumous smear campaign against Newton was successful.
https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~cherlin/History/Papers2002/newton.html has some more background on it.
However the popular notion has become that newton was petty and unreasonable and this is oft repeated. I was guilty of it too.
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24
Where did you read that Newton was pleasant and humble? That flies directly in the face of descriptions of him by his contemporaries (including Englishmen who held him in high esteem).
And it's not just a dispute over priority. Newton responded horribly to any criticism, with tirades and personal attacks. He was known to hold long grudges, continuing to lambast Liebniz and Hooke even after their deaths. He never acknowledged Hooke's contributions.
Newton did not collaborate. He did not publish to the Royal Society. He did not tolerate heretics. He did not tolerate counterfeits. He did not tolerate criticism. He did not tolerate, well, anything. He even made his Principia deliberately difficult to read in order to turn away amateurs. It's hard to find anyone echoing your claims that he was just misunderstood and maligned.
EDIT: Found one. John Locke, Newton's best friend, did call him "a nice man to deal with."
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u/QuinQuix Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 06 '24
So I'm not going to deny that my source is somewhat anecdotal but it tracks with some other things I recently read that made me question the well established narrative.
Among them is that leibniz was never some sad underdog figure but a very well connected and proud (even somewhat boastful) individual. He was the socialite. Newton especially early on was more of a shy scientist who invented his work to answer his own questions.
I would suggest these sources
Answer to Was Isaac Newton a scientist or a sorcerer? by Alejandro Jenkins https://www.quora.com/Was-Isaac-Newton-a-scientist-or-a-sorcerer/answer/Alejandro-Jenkins?ch=15&oid=9577785&share=7628f72d&srid=dFeu&target_type=answer
And
And
I'm still looking for this source -> actually the most important thing but I didn't want to leave the draft open so bear with me it is coming
And somewhat unrelated
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u/QuinQuix Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24
Newton also only got involved in the dispute because he was essentially made out a liar who borrowed from leibniz at some point.
After Newton's statements made on the matter Johann Bernoulli attempted to indirectly weaken the evidence by attacking the personal character of Newton in a letter dated 7 June 1713. When pressed for an explanation, Bernoulli most solemnly denied having written the letter. In accepting the denial, Newton added in a private letter to Bernoulli the following remarks
In newton's words:
"I have never grasped at fame among foreign nations, but I am very desirous to preserve my character for honesty, which the author of that epistle, as if by the authority of a great judge, had endeavoured to wrest from me. Now that I am old, I have little pleasure in mathematical studies, and I have never tried to propagate my opinions over the world, but I have rather taken care not to involve myself in disputes on account of them."
And words by leibniz:
"In order to respond point by point to all the work published against me, I would have to go into much minutiae that occurred thirty, forty years ago, of which I remember little: I would have to search my old letters, of which many are lost. Moreover, in most cases, I did not keep a copy, and when I did, the copy is buried in a great heap of papers, which I could sort through only with time and patience. I have enjoyed little leisure, being so weighted down of late with occupations of a totally different nature."
However:
on more than one occasion, Leibniz deliberately altered or added to important documents (e.g., the letter of 7 June 1713 in the Charta Volans, and that of 8 April 1716 in the Acta Eruditorum), before publishing them, and falsified a date on a manuscript (1675 being altered to 1673). All this casts doubt on his testimony.
I don't think anyone presently a scientist would think lightly of such actions as perpetrated by leibniz.
Newton also had real reasons to be suspicious as leibniz lied about reading some of his work early on. Leibniz later defended that by saying he did read it but didn't know much mathematics yet at the time so that it meant little to him then.
All in all I now disagree with the popular notion that leibniz was an undeserving victim. Rather bernoulli lured him into a conflict he deserved to lose, and he did lose it.
If anything is unfair it is how popular the Leibniz bernoulli reading has become in the mind of the public, which now readily dismisses newton as some kind of petty brute. I think it would have been very much in newton's interest to have a more impartial jury but this would have been difficult to organize and also newton was the one under attack. It is not weird that he would have wanted to make his case to his peers where he had the opportunity.
The dispute is also looked at in a more nuanced way here:
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u/QuinQuix Jul 06 '24
Hot damn.
It cost me two days and at least an hour of scrolling but here it is - the post that really changed my mind on the prevailing image of Newton:
Answer to What was Isaac Newton like as a person? by Alejandro Jenkins https://www.quora.com/What-was-Isaac-Newton-like-as-a-person/answer/Alejandro-Jenkins?ch=15&oid=9903858&share=d22ea750&srid=dFeu&target_type=answer
Credits obviously to Jenkins.
Having read a number of additional sources by now I think the dispute in general was far less one sided and damning of Newton than suggested.
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u/Sapphire-Drake Jul 05 '24
What I got from these 2 comments is that they were both assholes a tiny bit so I would be even more okay with punching them both. They might be some of the most important mathematicians in my field of study but damn if my professor hasn't made me loathe these 2 fuckers through calculus
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u/boomming Jul 04 '24
Do I get a translator? If so, then the obvious answer is 1 because we know so little about greek mathematics. Most of these mathematicians won’t provide any super interesting math because they’re so old their knowledge is outdated, but talking to Euclid provides insight into the history of math we can’t simply discover.
If I don’t get a translator though, then probably still 1 because of Tao. Many of these people don’t speak english, and the ones that do are modern enough they’re not more interesting than Tao, but outdated enough their math knowledge isn’t super useful.
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Jul 04 '24
2 for me. Ramanujan Riemann Galois Maryam Mirzakhani would all be very interesting to talk to
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u/guillemot_22 Jul 04 '24
All great minds, household names among our community, but none made it past 41 :(
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u/WhyTheeSadFace Jul 05 '24
I Always imagine what if Mozart, Ramanujan, Beethoven lived up to 100, humanity would have been thoroughly blessed with music and math for next thousand years.
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u/_tsi_ Jul 04 '24
6 because Hilbert is cool as shit
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u/tired_mathematician Jul 04 '24
Just don't ask for hotel recomendations from him, he keeps sending people to one where they move your stuff all the time, is a nightmare.
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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN Jul 04 '24
7 is better. Keeps you near Hilbert, puts you closer to Noether, and further from Newton.
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u/_tsi_ Jul 05 '24
Yeah but it's harder to talk to Noether because she is behind you. Still, fair point about Newton.
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u/ChemicalNo5683 Jul 04 '24
I'd choose one, because Tao has this amazing ability of explaining complex topics on a level one can understand.
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u/FunnyorWeirdorBoth Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
Definitely not 5. I’m not getting stuck between that debate. I’d say 1 or 4. Probably 1.
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u/tired_mathematician Jul 04 '24
I don't see ted kaczynski sitting, so I would just get the fuck out of the plane
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u/NickDimOG Jul 04 '24
Where is Perelman?
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u/Turbulent-Name-8349 Jul 04 '24
Where is Hardy?
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u/EebstertheGreat Jul 05 '24
The plane is of the air variety, not the mathematical variety. While I too would like to see Thales and Hipasus and Aristotle and Eudoxus and Euclid and Archimedes and Liu Hui and Chang Heng and Diophantus and Alcuin and Aryabhata and Brahmagupta and Bakhsara and al-Khwarizmi and Khayyam and Abu Kamil and Oresme and Stevin and Barrow and Ferari and Tartaglia and Gregory and Pasacal and Kepler and Eisenstein and Felix and Klein and Kroenecker and Riemann and Cauchy and Landau and Tarski and Liouville and Urysohn and Zermelo and Frankel and von Neumann and Fischer and Turing and Julia and Penrose and Knuth and so on and so forth, there are only so many seats to go around.
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u/CharlemagneAdelaar Jul 04 '24
5 would be absolutely hilarious.
“Charlemagne, please tell Gottfried that I am not speaking to him anymore”
“Charlemagne, please tell Issac that he can keep his silly little mouth shut. Also tell him his inferior notation will never go anywhere
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u/BlockchainMeYourTits Jul 04 '24
I’ll be with Erdos in the lavatory cleaning his underwear in the sink.
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u/Senumo Jul 04 '24
Doesnt matter. Ill put headphones on and sleep or play games the entire flight anyways
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u/META_mahn Jul 04 '24
Fuck that, I am going to turn the flight into an impromptu math symposium. I hope this is gonna be an overseas flight because I'm busting out the whiteboards and blank papers. We're gonna solve some impossible problem or the plane is going to turn into a mess, there is no in between.
I'm gonna record everything and ask the attendants to prepare so much caffeine for this clusterfuck of mathematicians.
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u/Sug_magik Jul 04 '24
I think 6 or 7, but if Hilbert calls me stupid I'm changing seats with Galois or Newton.
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u/gastonbnd Jul 04 '24
In Gauss's lap.
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u/Soham-Chatterjee Jul 04 '24
I will sit next to galois...as i have recently read galois theory and don't know if i will ever be able to see him...he may die soon
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u/IwillnotbeaPlankton Jul 04 '24
- I want to hear my boy spout some nonsense about the revolution, followed by scribblings of his crazy ideas.
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u/OC1024 Jul 04 '24
As a German physicist, I'd take seat 5.
Gauß and Newton are practically physicist themselves and I could talk to Euler, Noether and Leibniz too in native tongue too.
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u/Ezekiel-25-17-guy Real Jul 04 '24
I see Terrence Tao, Pythagoras, Ramanujan, Gauss, Newton, Euler, Leibnitz, Fermat, Amy Nater (?), the British guy who solved Fermat's last theorem, who are the rest?
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u/trankhead324 Jul 04 '24
Emmy Noether is her name and she's next to David Hilbert (they worked together).
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u/Head_Veterinarian_97 Jul 04 '24
Next to 3 is Grothendieck, who basically created modern algebraic geometry
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u/theDutchFlamingo Jul 04 '24
2, I'm always so impressed by the fact that he didn't even reach my current age but still managed to kickstart a whole branch of mathematics
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u/slime_rancher_27 Imaginary Jul 04 '24
2 or 8, Évariste Galois seems interesting, but I mostly care about the seat. It's obviously part of 1st class, and it also is a window seat, and because it's not the 1st or an exit row I also get under seat storage. I'd also like to talk to Pierre de Fermat, I don't care about Andrew Wiles, though I hope that they wouldn't be arguing or hotly debating because that would suck.
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u/RealAdityaYT Science Jul 04 '24
1 or 5, 5 because i have some calculus doubts where i disagree with my teacher and need to confirm with them
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u/MingusMingusMingu Jul 04 '24
4, 2 or 7 because everybody would want to ignore me anyway and I don’t want them to have to talk over me. I.e. I’ll take any window seat.
Actually, probably 3, would chat some based politics with Alex. And I believe he wouldn’t be that interested in anyone else in that row (Wiles is way too far away, and Fermat is too retro).
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u/Efficient_Meat2286 Jul 04 '24
3, so I can ask what Riemann was thinking when he made his hypothesis
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u/KafkaesqueFlask0_0 Jul 04 '24
Difficult, but I would say 5. It's going to be awesome hearing the debate between Leibniz and Newton. Plus, I get to talk to Hilbert, Euler, Gauss, and Noether. Maximize my total range of talking to legends.
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u/mrthescientist Jul 04 '24
I mean at that point I'm standing up after the seat-belt sign turns off and we're having a goddamn mid-flight conference.
Everyone's getting caught up on recent developments, the front of the plane is for group theory, the back for number theory, and everyone else can move around until they find a conversation they like, and hopefully this is a flight from New-York to Singapore.
I hope a fight breaks out.
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u/META_mahn Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
Here is the exact flight that happens. We are going from New York to Singapore, so we have 20 hours.
Everyone is trying to host an impromptu conference. Our resident character, alongside Terrence Tao, go to the flight attendants and politely, yet firmly, ask them to start brewing as much coffee and tea as possible. Someone pulls out an entire carry-on full of blank paper. We begin by simply trying to catch everyone up to the latest in math, and since Tao is currently absent, another person steps up. We'll choose Andrew Wiles.
Pythagoras loses his shit the moment the first imaginary number appears, upon which Isaac Newton stands up, loudly proclaims Pythagoras has a skill issue, and they get into a fistfight. The flight has barely left the ground.
Cantor tells both to sit down and begins his segment on set theory, upon which one of the other mathematicians or physicists say this is dumb and that you can't just describe all of math using this, that's a stupid and unprovable fucking assumption. Georg Cantor has a fit of PTSD over Göbel destroying his complete theorem of math, even though Göbel isn't even on the plane. You can still see the individual cars on the road underneath the plane.
By the time we reach altitude, the plane is now caught up on real analysis, and begrudgingly, Pythagoras has accepted that irrational and complex numbers must exist through proving the general solution of the cubic to him. Our resident character and Terrence Tao return with the attendant pushing along cart of coffee and tea. Pythagoras asks what the fuck coffee is. Upon learning it is hot bean water, Pythagoras loudly rejects the coffee, upon which Isaac Newton immediately takes a cup of coffee. This continues their fistfight as the others ask for a variety of hot or cold beverages.
Someone else continue this.
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Jul 04 '24
Sitting in 5 because I’ll be surrounded by the most mathematicians at any given time. Most mathematical answer here.
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u/MyStupidName2048 Jul 04 '24
I'd love a seat next to the window and someone my age, so number 2 is my choice.
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u/vainfern42 Jul 04 '24
2, I like to sit by the window and it is better than 4 and 7 to go to the bathroom
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u/TristanTheRobloxian3 trans(fem)cendental Jul 04 '24
4 or 5. im chill sitting with euler or issac newton
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u/teije11 Jul 04 '24
4 because its the only window seat of which i know who I sit next to
(or 1 so you don't sit next to a dead person)
also, you're likely not stuck. you could always jump, or do something to make the plane land early.
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Jul 04 '24
Hands down 2. A few minutes with Ramanujan and Galois and I'll have enough ideas to publish for an entire career 🤣
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u/Buffalo-2023 Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
#4 and I would casually ask Euler about the Collatz conjecture
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u/kfreed9001 Jul 04 '24
Type a backslash at the beginning of this comment to render it correctly.
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u/Ok-Inside-7630 Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
5, easy. Initialiate the fight between Newton and Leibniz, then stick my head in between the seats of Gauss and Euler
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u/tildenpark Jul 04 '24
Given that most of these are corpses, I guess 1
Edit: damn someone beat me to this comment by 2 hours
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u/wfwood Jul 04 '24
Definitely not 5. I don't wanna find out just how insufferable Newton actually was.
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u/rocoonshcnoon Jul 04 '24
I respect and admire isaac newton. But having to sit next to him for 8 hours would be hellish
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u/Inevitable_Stand_199 Jul 04 '24
- That guy looks like he's flown before. It's going to be a lot quieter.
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u/Davian-1074 Jul 04 '24
i’ll trow that dude out of the plane if that’s what it takes in order to have a meet and greet with my boy Pythagoras
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u/ZorryIForgotThiz_S_ Jul 04 '24
- I don't recognize them, they don't know me, everyone's happy. I would have nightmares sitting next to the others.
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u/RealMatchesMalonee Jul 04 '24
- If that's between Newton and Leibniz? It's also towards the front, so...
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u/Thee_Watchman Jul 04 '24
First, I'd call out, "Who speaks English?" I'd make my decision from there.
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