{"id":355,"date":"2008-09-07T18:35:28","date_gmt":"2008-09-07T22:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=355"},"modified":"2008-09-07T18:35:28","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T22:35:28","slug":"on-mathematicians-and-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=355","title":{"rendered":"On mathematicians and mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lucatrevisan.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/03\/oded-schramm\/\">Luca<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/terrytao.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/03\/oded-schramm\/\">Terry Tao<\/a> have already reported the <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/schramm\/\">tragic loss<\/a> of the brilliant probabilist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oded_Schramm\">Oded Schramm<\/a> in a hiking accident.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t know Oded, but I knew some of his great results and was deeply saddened by the news.\u00a0 My heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family.<\/p>\n<p>It was <a href=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=121\">two years ago<\/a> that we lost <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.ias.edu\/~misha\/\">Misha Alekhnovich<\/a>, who I did know, in a whitewater rafting accident.\u00a0 Other mathematicians and scientists lost in similar ways have included <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heinz_Pagels\">Heinz Pagels<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jacques_Herbrand\">Jacques Herbrand<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Raymond_Paley\">Raymond Paley<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abqtrib.com\/news\/2007\/sep\/26\/unm-professor-galicki-who-loved-math-and-hiking-de\/\">Krzysztof Galicki<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erik_Rauch\">Erik Rauch<\/a>.\u00a0 The teenage Einstein very nearly died while hiking on a mountain near Zurich.\u00a0 I have more than one irreplaceable colleague who&#8217;s repeatedly courted death on the ski slopes.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to issue a plea to any mathematicians and scientists who might be reading: <em>please go easier on the extreme outdoor activities.<\/em>\u00a0 Let those who live for such things demonstrate their daring by gambling their lives; those who live for the ages can find safer recreations.\u00a0 The world needs more nerds, not fewer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luca and Terry Tao have already reported the tragic loss of the brilliant probabilist Oded Schramm in a hiking accident.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t know Oded, but I knew some of his great results and was deeply saddened by the news.\u00a0 My heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family. It was two years ago that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}