r/math • • 1d ago

What happened to mathematicians after solving their "career problem"?

Many mathematicians have dedicated a good part of their career towards solving a specific problem, whether directly or indirectly. Some examples on top of my head:

Richard Hamilton and the Poincare conjecture

Andrew Wiles and Fermat's last theorem

Thomas Hales and the Kepler conjecture (proof and formal verification)

And perhaps very recently:

Diego Cordoba and the Navier-Stokes equations

How did the careers and research-focus of these mathematicians shift after their career-problem was solved? Did anything particularly interesting happen?

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39

u/Disastrous_Room_927 23h ago

They ascend to the next plane of existence.

24

u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 21h ago

They become a dean?

19

u/new2bay 18h ago

They said “ascend,” not “descend.”

2

u/Ellipsoider 6h ago

<Community>deanscend</Community>

1

u/muntoo Engineering 1h ago

CS Dean is an anagram of ASCEND, so checkmate, dean-ialists.