Root of Maths Genius Sought 251
ananyo writes "He founded two genetic-sequencing companies and sold them for hundreds of millions of dollars. He helped to sequence the genomes of a Neanderthal man and James Watson, who co-discovered DNA's double helix. Now, entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg has set his sights on another milestone: finding the genes that underlie mathematical genius. Rothberg and physicist Max Tegmark, who is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, have enrolled about 400 mathematicians and theoretical physicists from top-ranked US universities in a study dubbed 'Project Einstein'. They plan to sequence the participants' genomes using the Ion Torrent machine that Rothberg developed. Critics say that the sizes of these studies are too small to yield meaningful results for such complex traits. But Rothberg is pushing ahead. 'I'm not at all concerned about the critics,' he says, adding that he does not think such rare genetic traits could be useful in selecting for smarter babies. Some mathematicians, however, argue that maths aptitude is not born so much as made. 'I feel that the notion of "talent" may be overrated,' says Michael Hutchings, a mathematician also at Berkeley."
No such thing as "math person" (the Atlantic) (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, I just read this article last night. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/ [theatlantic.com] It says there probably are some "math geniuses" out there, so doesn't totally contradict the Rotherberg/Tegmark research. But the thesis indicates we have plenty of computers for the genius level math, and that most of the problem (weakness in general population) derives directly from the myth that innate/genetic "math ability" exists at all.
And if the math ability is God-given, there are computer programs now to discover even that (computer proves God article in Der Spiegel). http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/computer-scientists-prove-god-exists/story?id=20678984 [go.com]