Comments on: The World Wide Wall

By: Carmelo

Carmelo — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:17:30 +0000

60- David Simon

By: Jellyfish Math at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:02:32 +0000

[...] the great Sir Michael Atiyah, another Fields Medalist who I might well have included in my gallery of heroes. Despite my great admiration for Atiyah, I believe he’s wrong on this issue. But more [...]

By: Gil

Gil — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:28:27 +0000

Many choices with which I would heartily agree: Garcia. Sinatra, Leone, Eastwood, Scorcese would be a few of the less obvious ones. I would add Michael Oakeshott, Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, PJ O’Rourke, Jose Ortega y Gassett, Jimmy Stewart, Yvonne Chouinard, Frank Shorter, Adam Smith, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, Gerry Lopez, Brooks Robinson, Montaigne, and Jonathan Richman.

By: Who’s Who at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:03:21 +0000

[...] of collective action, commenters have now managed to identify all of the personal heroes in my portrait gallery, either in comments to the original post or to the followup. For those who would like to check [...]

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:29:43 +0000

Some I think I know, but have a question mark after it. Many I just don’t know. And I’m confused at at least two choices (you don’t have to explain yourself to me, but from some of your writings, just surprised).

1. Galileo?
2. Shakespeare
3. John Donne?
4. Descarte
5. ?
6. ?
7. Newton
8. Franklin
9. Euler
10. ?
11. Jefferson
12. ?
13. Gauss
14. ?
15. Lincoln
16. Tubman
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?
20. ?
21. Hilbert
22. von Neumann?
23. Einstein
24. Bose?
25. ?
26. Marx brothers
27. ? (although, I recognize him)
28. ?
29. ?
30. Churchill
31. ?
32. ?
33. Hayek?
34. ?
35. ?
36. ?
37. Reagan (I’m shocked he’s on this wall)
38. Freedman (spelling?)
39. ?
40. ?
41. ?
42. ?
43. ?
44. Thatcher
45. ?
46. ?
47. ?
48. Eastwood
49. ?
50. ?
51. ?
52. ?
53. Dawkins?
54. ?
55. Garcia?
56. Scorcese (I’m shocked he’s on this wall)
57. ?
58. ?
59. Pinker
60. ?

By: Patrick R. Sullivan

Patrick R. Sullivan — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:48:30 +0000

‘So I’m curious, what makes your heart go pit-a-pat that so few women possess?’

Be careful answering that one, Steve. Remember what happened to Larry Summers at Harvard.

By: Steve Sutton

Steve Sutton — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:55:38 +0000

#3 – John Donne (1572 – 31 March 1631) was a Jacobean metaphysical poet.

#6 – Pierre de Fermat (17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus.

#20 – David Hilbert (January 23, 1862 – February 14, 1943) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

#22 (not #19) – William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.

#19 – James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician. His most important achievement was classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory.

#28 (not #25) – Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was an Anglo/American poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.

#25 – Niels Henrik David Bohr (7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

#46 – Alexander Grothendieck (born March 28, 1928 in Berlin, Germany) is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.

#47 – Sergio Leone (January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was a legendary Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the “Spaghetti Western” genre.

#59 (not #60) – Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science.

A useful search tool you may not have heard of TinEye (http://www.tineye.com) is a reverse image search site.

By: autogen

autogen — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:18:03 +0000

2: shakespeare
4. fermat
5. galilieo
7. newton
8. franklin
9. euler
10. hume
11. jefferson
12. ricardo
13. gauss
14. bastiat
15. lincoln
18. dostoevsky
19. maxwell
21. hilbert
22. yeats
23. einstein
24. noether (i think)
25. bohr
26. the marx brothers
27. shrodinger
28 eliot
30. churchill
31. heisenberg
32. dirac
37. reagan
38. friedman
41. dylan thomas
42 sinatra
44 thatcher
46 grothendieck
48 eastwood
51 solow (?)
53 dawkins
54 dennett
56 scorcese
59 pinker

By: Unidentified Persons at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:03:54 +0000

[...] Buy « The World Wide Wall [...]

By: dave

dave — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:39:18 +0000

@leah
seems like a list of heroes/role models to me.
gender identity being what it is, seems likely that a man would have more male heroes/role models than female.
if you are indeed female (as your name suggests) i would wager that your list would include a far higher proportion of female characters.
marie curie, i presume.
being the under-educated dolt that i am, i only recognized a handful.
my list would be much shorter and would include nikola tesla. i think he was in a rock band in the 80’s. im also a big fan of the guy who calculated the circumference of the earth using a couple of sticks way back in the day.