[FOM] P NP buzz

[Oran Magal]

Dear list members,

The implied question seems to be: do credentials matter?

Ideally, they shouldn't matter and mathematics should speak for
itself. But as a practical matter, since checking "important" proofs
requires precious time by top-level researchers in a field, the
question whether a purported proof merits the efforts required to
verify it and fill in the inevitable gaps in detail does have
something to do with recognisable credentials.

An interesting case in this regard might be the story of G. Perelman
and the Poincaré hypothesis; if I understood correctly, his work,
while recognised as a correct solution, required a great deal of
effort by a number of people to fill out to an acceptable degree of
detail. But I don't want to take the discussion too far on a tangent.

Sincerely,

Oran Magal (non-credentialed),
McGill University


On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Martin Davis <eipye at pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> Harvey Friedman wrote:
>  > Here's my question. Is Vinay the most accomplished and credentialed
>  > person (at the time of the circulation) to circulate an outright
>  > public claim to have solved P vs. NP?
>
> How credentialed was Galois?
>
> Martin
>
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