R.I.P. David Blackwell

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/education/17blackwell.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=david%2520blackwell&st=cse

by yarapavan • 16 years ago

60 17 16 years ago

jmount• 16 years ago

Incredibly great quote from the article: “Basically, I’m not interested in doing research and I never have been,” Professor David Blackwell said. “I’m interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing. And often to understand something you have to work it out yourself because no one else has done it.”

rman666• 16 years ago

That is an amazing story. It should remind us all of how ridiculous society can be, especially when it comes to denying advancement to a truly talented person simply because of their race. Thank you for submitting this to HN.

jeb• 16 years ago

Thank goodness we live in the now. Imagine all you want to do is study mathematics, and people are constantly pushing you here and there because of the color of your skin.

Equality really is a great thing.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Racism is still very much alive today, yes, thank goodness we live in the 'now', but there is lots of work to be done in this respect, and skin colour is unfortunately not the only factor that people will use to discriminate.

amichail2• 16 years ago

Why is it acceptable to mention his race at all in an article like this?

tshtf2• 16 years ago

Dr. Blackwell was born in 1919. If you are unaware, at this point in US history there was both de facto and de jure segregation in the United States. As the article states, he was initially denied an invitation to become a faculty member at both Princeton and Berkeley due to his race.

Although society is more colorblind today, the United States was a racially biased society for most of its history, and most of Dr. Blackwell's life.

amichail2• 16 years ago

But maybe he would want to be remembered for his academic accomplishments only.

hristov• 16 years ago

ROFL. Let me guess ... you "don't see race."

It seems an article that tells somebody's life story should mention their race. Furthermore, the article centered on the guy's professional carrier, and his race was a very relevant factor there (as you would know if you read the article).

mturmon2• 16 years ago

His race seems to have profoundly affected his career trajectory. See also: Alan Turing, Albert Einstein.

Confusion• 16 years ago

Why wouldn't it be acceptable?

mturmon2• 16 years ago

The following is probably the best-known result bearing his name:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Rao-Blackwell_theorem

wheels• 16 years ago

Tangentially related, The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black American to have gotten a PhD. from Harvard, is not only a great window into the struggles of black Americans in the generation after the Civil War, but also some of the finest writing in the English language:

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong- limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Souls_of_Black_Folk

R.I.P. David Blackwell

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