On triple crowns in mathematics and AMS badges

As some of you figured out from the previous post, my recent paper (joint with Martin Kassabov) was accepted to the Annals of Mathematics.  This being one of my childhood dreams (well, a version of it), I was elated for a few days.  Then I thought – normal children don’t dream about this kind of stuff.  In fact, we as a mathematical community have only community awards (as in prizes, medals, etc.) and have very few “personal achievement” benchmarks.  But, of course, they are crucial for the “follow your dreams” approach to life (popularized famously in the Last Lecture).  How can we make it work in mathematics?

I propose we invent some new “badges/statistics” which can be “awarded” by AMS automatically, based on the list of publications, and noted in the MathSciNet Author’s Profile.  The awardees can then proudly mention them on the department websites, they can be included in Wikipedia entries of these mathematicians, etc.   Such statistics are crucial everywhere in sports, and most are individual achievements.  Some were even invented to showcase a particular athlete.   So I thought – we can also do this.  Here is my list of proposed awards. Ok, it’s not very serious…  Enjoy!

Triple Crown in Mathematics

A paper in each of Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones, and Journal of AMS.  What, you are saying that “triple crown” is about horse racing?  Not true.  There are triple crowns in everything, from bridge to golf, from hiking to motor racing.  Let’s add this one to the list.

Other Journal awards

Some (hopefully) amusing variations on the Tripe Crown.  They are all meant to be great achievements, something to brag about.

Marathon – 300 papers

Ultramarathon – 900 papers

Iron Man – 5 triple crown awards

Big Ten – 10 papers in journals where “University” is part of the title

Americana – 5 papers in journals whose title may only include US cities (e.g. Houston), states (e.g. Illinois, Michigan, New York), or other parts of American geography (such as Rocky Mountains, Pacific Ocean)

Foreign lands – 5 papers in journals named after non-US cities (e.g. Bordeaux, Glasgow, Monte Carlo, Moscow), and five papers in journals named after foreign countries.

Around the world – 5 papers in journals whose titles have different continents (Antarctica Journal of Mathematics does not count, but Australasian Journal of Combinatorics can count for either continent).

What’s in a word – 5 papers in single word journals: (e.g. Astérisque, Complexity, Configurations, Constraints, Entropy, Integers, Nonlinearity, Order, Positivity, Symmetry).

Decathlon – papers in 10 different journals beginning with “Journal of”.

Annals track – papers in 5 different journals beginning with “Annals of”.

I-heart-mathematicians – 5 papers in journals with names of mathematicians (e.g. Bernoulli, Fourier, Lie, Fibonacci, Ramanujan)

Publication badges

Now, imagine AMS awarded badges the same way MathOverflow does, i.e. in bulk and for both minor and major contributions.  People would just collect them in large numbers, and perhaps spark controversies.  But what would they look like?  Here is my take:

enthusiast (bronze) – published at least 1 paper a year, for 10 years (can be awarded every year when applicable)

fanatic (silver) – published at least 10 papers a year, for 20 years

obsessed (gold) – published at least 20 papers a year, for 30 years

nice paper (bronze) – paper has at least 2 citations

good paper (silver) – paper has at least 20 citations

great paper (gold) – paper has at least 200 citations

famous paper (platinum) – paper has at least 2000 citations

necromancer (silver) – cited a paper which has not been cited for 25 years

asleep at the wheel (silver) – published an erratum to own paper 10 years later

destroyer (silver) – disproved somebody’s published result by an explicit counterexample

peer pressure (silver) – retracted own paper, purchased and burned all copies, sent cease and desist letters to all websites which illegally host it

scholar (bronze) – at least one citation

supporter (bronze) – cited at least one paper

writer (bronze) – first paper

reviewer (bronze) – first MathSciNet review

self-learner (bronze) – solved own open problem in a later paper

self-citer (bronze) – first citation of own paper

self-fan (silver) – cited 5 own papers at least 5 times each

narcissist (gold) – cited 15 own papers at least 15 times each

enlightened rookie (silver) – first paper was cited at least 20 times

dry spell (bronze) – no papers for the past 3 years, but over 100 citations to older papers over the same period

remission (silver) – first published paper after a dry spell

soliloquy (bronze) – no citation other than self-citations for the past 5 years

drum shape whisperer (silver) – published two new objects with exactly same eigenvalues

neo-copernicus (silver) – found a coordinate system to die for

gaussian ingenuity (gold) – found eight proofs of the same law or theorem

fermatist (silver) – published paper has a proof sketched on the margins

pythagorist (gold) – penned an unpublished and publicly unavailable preprint with over 1000 citations

homologist (platinum) – has a (co)homology named after

dualist (platinum) – has a reciprocity or duality named after

ghost-writer (silver) – published with a person who has been dead for 10 years

prince of nerdom (silver) – wrote a paper joint with a computer

king of nerdom (gold) – had a computer write a joint paper

sequentialist (gold) – authored a sequel of five papers with the same title

prepositionist (gold) – ten papers which begin with a preposition “on”, “about”, “toward”, or “regarding” (prepositions at the end of the title are not counted, but sneered at).

luddite (bronze) – paper originally written NOT in TeX or LaTeX.

theorist (silver) – the implied constant in O(.) notation in the main result in greater than 10⁸⁰.

conditionalist (silver) – main result is a conditional some known conjecture (not awarded in Crypto and Theory CS until the hierarchy of complexity classes is established)

ackermannist (gold) – main result used a function which grows greater than any finite tower of 2’s.

What about you?  Do you have any suggestions? 🙂