Witchunt of Yau!
Posted: Sep 13, 2006 5:12 PM
http://boards.newyorker.com/thread.jspa?threadID=736&tstart=0
Dear Ms Nasar,
I am neither a geometer nor a member of Yau's school nor am I Chinese! I am a deep admirer of your lovely book " A beautiful mind."
I was shocked by your article in the New Yorker about the Poincare conjecture.
You and some members of the mathematical community who have taken this public have done a disservice to the noble field of mathematics. You have seriously damaged your own reputation among serious mathematicians. Your article was vulgar and in poor taste. It was tabloid journalism at its worst and not the kind of journalism that one expects from Columbia.
What amazes me here is the way you have acted as a willing and gleeful pawn in the hands of members of various power cliques who seem to have an agenda and grouse against Yau. At the very least you should have been balanced in asking for quotes for and against your "villain", you have done none of it. Actors who have nothing to do with the Poincare conjecture or topology and who have anti-Yau views are generously quoted and those who might have given a differing opinion are quoted not at all or else curtly dismissed between brackets. Is this what they teach in journalism school these days, to be unfair and unbalanced?
Being a member of the mathematical community, I am well aware of the cliques that rule various fields of mathematics. I have been told that atleast two of the quoted people in your article have also played similar games that you attribute to Yau and it is quite well discussed amongst us. The point is these are all part of the game in any field of intellectual endeavor, unfortunately. But to pompously assert in a very public forum, as you and your heroes have done, and to go after Yau with this kind of a zeal is nothing short of a witchunt. I had always thought Salem days are long gone by!!
You are a journalist and it is your bread and butter to write sensational articles for your living, I can understand this to some extent. After all, we cannot all be like Sy Hersh doing deep research journalism, some of which appears in the same New Yorker. Like first rate mathematical journals where nth rate to first rate articles appear so it seems with the New Yorker. But I do not understand the venom spewed on Yau in a such a public way by fellow mathematicians. Some of us are quite amazed at this! I have seen private e-mails where some of them have recanted and at least one has given a brilliant clarification. Why has the NewYorker not published any of those letters?
To make a final observation: the people who have railed against Yau are mathematical dwarfs compared to Yau . This is the common take I got from several mathematicians who I spoke with.
One of these days, we might even meet in one of the cocktail circuits, I will try to find out more about your real motivation for writing this article. Is it possible that the article is more than to add a line in your resume, but was actually instigated by forces hostile to Yau, but have left none of their fingerprints? In other words, they are not even quoted in the article but are still quite involved!
Have a good day! Try to think of Sy Hersh for inspiration not Jerry Springer!
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