Where are they now? They were hyped as the smartest generation of young mathematicians.
Who is the new generation?
Qiaochu Yuan, Akhil Mathew,Will Sawin, Evan O'Dorney, Eric Wofsey: mathprodigies
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Qiaochu Yuan : math PhD at Berkeley
Evan O'Dorney : math PhD at Princeton
Will Sawin : math PhD at Princeton + Columbia AP
Akhil Mathew : math PhD at HarvardI believe Qiaochu Yuan dropped out.
He fell in with the wrong crowd (SFBA “rationalists”), now he’s a life coach or something
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He used to be really smart guy at MIT. What happened?
Qiaochu Yuan : math PhD at Berkeley
Evan O'Dorney : math PhD at Princeton
Will Sawin : math PhD at Princeton + Columbia AP
Akhil Mathew : math PhD at HarvardI believe Qiaochu Yuan dropped out.
He fell in with the wrong crowd (SFBA “rationalists”), now he’s a life coach or something
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He used to be really smart guy at MIT. What happened?
Qiaochu Yuan : math PhD at Berkeley
Evan O'Dorney : math PhD at Princeton
Will Sawin : math PhD at Princeton + Columbia AP
Akhil Mathew : math PhD at HarvardI believe Qiaochu Yuan dropped out.
He fell in with the wrong crowd (SFBA “rationalists”), now he’s a life coach or something
he became completely disillusioned with math and lost his mind
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Qiachu website is really sad. Guy has had some hard times. Glad he's happier now
’Hi! I'm Qiaochu Yuan. That's "chow-chew," as in food and a thing you do with food. You'll probably never need to pronounce my last name. I only know one other person with the same first name as me, and she has the same last name too, so that wouldn't even help.‘
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He used to be really smart guy at MIT. What happened?
Qiaochu Yuan : math PhD at Berkeley
Evan O'Dorney : math PhD at Princeton
Will Sawin : math PhD at Princeton + Columbia AP
Akhil Mathew : math PhD at HarvardI believe Qiaochu Yuan dropped out.
He fell in with the wrong crowd (SFBA “rationalists”), now he’s a life coach or something
In high school he was a superstar. In college he was a star among many. In graduate school at Berkeley where top talents converge, he was just another good student. Proving a major theorem at the top level turned out to be a lot harder than he imagined. So he "lost interest".
His turning into some kind of life coach, posting philosophical musings to random websitse, etc., are just an act to save face. To concel that he failed.
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Qiaochu Yuan : math PhD at Berkeley
Evan O'Dorney : math PhD at Princeton
Will Sawin : math PhD at Princeton + Columbia AP
Akhil Mathew : math PhD at HarvardO'Dorney is supposed to graduate this year. He will get PhD (or probably did already) but that's about it. Just look at his website. Those music composition stuff (which aren't very good) are just distractions to cover up his struggle to excel as a top-level mathematician. He got stuck publishing undergraduate-level papers. That's about it.
Nevertheless, having the IMO medal and putnam fellow thing will allow him to land a good position at one of the top quants.
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So the people who did better than them in grad school. Would those people have crushed the putnam if they prepped and participated or is it two skill sets that are not entirely correlated?
Many of them are foreign students who did their undergraduate outside US and Canada, therefore never participate in Putnam. Some of them have IMO medals.
But many top mathematicians just never bother participating in those competitions.
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So the people who did better than them in grad school. Would those people have crushed the putnam if they prepped and participated or is it two skill sets that are not entirely correlated?
Not entirely correlated. Neither is doing micro theory and macro theory.
