繁星客栈 - Daniel Stroock on the New Yorker article

From http://www.doctoryau.com

Daniel W. Stroock's clarification on Nasar's misinterpretation
Oct. 6, 2006

I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and angered by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Having seen Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar led me to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinion about his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts to support young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossified power structure in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her that I sometimes have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I told her that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself open to his enemies by sounding too self-promoting. As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statement and made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has his faults, but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults. Unfortunately, Nasar used my statement to bolster her case that the opposite is true, and for this I cannot forgive her.

Daniel W. Stroock
Simons Professor of Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

执理至简，驭数至繁。衍之无不可通之数，抉之无不可穷之理。