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NEW YORK TIMES editorial opinion
Posted:
Apr 27, 2009 12:34 PM
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Dear Math Forum members:
Today's NY Times reports that under performing US graduate education departments should adopt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
interdisciplinary, and crossed trained academic programs.
The article also shows that today's academics are often self-serving. My view is that academics too often "shut their eyes and ears" to topics that are being worked on by professors and graduate students in their own building, and at times, in adjoining offices.
My understanding is that the U. of Chicago, and other US universities, do not expose their Egyptology students to rigorous discussions of the RMP, and other Middle Kingdom math text translations. That is, there are no PhD programs at the U. of Chicago, Brown and other US university in Egyptian mathematics. Egyptian math is an orphan.
Philology, and language issues are the focus of their programs, an oversight that the July 27-29 Mainz, Germany conference (chaired by Tanja Pemmerening and Annette Imhausen) are beginning to address:
http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1916972&tstart=0
The problem/solution of interdisciplinary translations of mathematical texts runs deep. For too long personalized transliterations of Egyptian math texts have been offered as translations, which they are not!
Best Wishes to Tanja Pemmerening, and Annette Imhausen, and their far sighted conference attendees. There is much work to do.
Best Regards,
Milo Gardner
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