[dmazin]

There is no reason to think we are no longer producing people with colossal intellect. They are probably now collaborators on a large project, since that is what math and science have become.

Plus we haven’t had enough time to make myths about the recent times. Of course the 20th century was incredible for physics, but we don’t know yet what will make the recent years special. We may, for example, in 80 years wonder about how it was that the early 21st century produced so many ambitious, large-scale experiments.

[dogsgobork]

It's also possible that the greatest minds of our time aren't engaged in furthering our understanding of the universe, but instead devising more efficient ways of displaying internet advertising or faster stock trading algorithms.

[pas]

I've always felt that this is USDA Prime bullshit.

Einstein wasn't wasted away his years at the patent office.

Also you could say that the greatest minds of the 20th century all engaged in coming up with bigger and bigger explosions for the military.

And so on.

[dmazin]

That’s a great point.

The silver lining is that many of these companies publicly release their research. i.e. Rob Pike and Ken Thompson may be working on advertising, but we can still benefit from Golang.

[criddell]

I have no idea about the state of modern mathematics but I wouldn't have guessed that the idea of a lone mathematician has passed. What are the big projects in mathematics?

[joe_the_user]

I'm not sure if it's necessarily big projects but the proving difficult theorems today has often involved the construction of huge "machinery", whole branch of math, that then get applied to simple-to-state-but-difficult-to-prove theorems, the example being Wiles using modular form theories to prove Fermet's last theorem.

And this situation comes because all (or the great majority) of the easy theorems have been proved for most established branches of math.

This also means great discoveries are coming at a later age for mathematicians, as simply getting up to speed in complex fields takes years.

All of this implies it would be hard to have another Von Neumann today.

[whatshisface]

It would take people like us (anyone who doesn't already know the big projects in math are) years of study to resolve that list in to anything more than names. However if you're looking for a modern math celebrity I'd volunteer Terrence Tao. Although only a mathematician could understand what he's working on it's clear from how he's talked about that in eighty years people will be saying, "I wonder if there will be any people like Tao in my lifetime."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

[KingFelix]

Roger Penrose is still around

[dmazin]

You’re right, math is a little bit less collaborative than other endeavors still. Lone mathematicians still make huge contributions, e.g. Perelman.

But for example, one could call the endeavor of classifying all the finite simple groups a big collaborative project.