Myth: The reason there is no Nobel Price for Mathematics is because Alfred Nobel’s fiancée wife had an affair with a mathematician. You’d be hard pressed to take any upper level university level mathematics course and not hear some variation of this story at least once per term from your mathematics professor (I personally have heard it from three different mathematics professors, one physics professor, and one computer science professor who was formerly a mathematics professor): “The reason there is no ‘Nobel Prize’ for Mathematics is that Alfred Nobel’s wife (sometimes mistress or fiancée) had an affair with a famed mathematics professor (actual name of professor varies based on who’s telling the story, but most popular go with famed Swedish mathematician Gosta Mittag-Leffler). So Nobel stipulated in his will that there should not be a Nobel Prize for mathematics for fear that said famed mathematics professor would win it.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:11:28 +0000
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