[codemac]

You know academics is a bit fucked when someone being anointed a MacArthur fellow was a "lecturer" at UNH from 1999 until being promoted to "professor" in January of 2014! The plus side being someone like Mr. Zhang gets to stay working on interesting academic problems.

I know several people getting their PhD, lecturing, and assistent professors.. but I only know one person on a tenure "track" and they want desperately to quit. We as a society have got to figure out how to incept public research institutions.

[shas3]

Yitang Zhang is an outlier in that sense, like Alexander Grothendick and Grigori Perelman. Many other great mathematicians, like Terence Tao, Timothy Gowers, etc. and even some working on 'big problems' like Andrew Wiles are in stable academic jobs. If his own words [1] are anything to go by, Zhang's situation is probably due to his adviser's unwillingness or inability to recommend him for good academic positions.

[1] http://nautil.us/issue/5/fame/the-twin-prime-hero

[cma]

Andrew Wiles had to do all the work in secret while releasing old papers as a cover.