About me
I’m at the Department of Mathematics of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before that, I was at the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany (2007-2009), the University of South Africa (2001-2007) and the University of Pretoria (1994-2001).
My research interests are in convex, combinatorial and discrete geometry, as well as various types of combinatorics, such as finite geometries and extremal combinatorics.
Here you’ll find my blog on combinatorial geometry and my publication list.
Dear Konrad,
I solved an ancient mathematical problem. I need now for someone, maybe you, to take a look at my results and to confirm that the problem is solved. I chose the LSE because I read social anthropology there and in particular you because you have the interest in geometry and graph.
All of my tutors from the department are retired and or deceased. But if you need a reference maybe Peter Loizos could be contacted. I would prefer to contact him myself first.
Geoffrey Alan Cadman
25th August 2010 at 3.28 am
Geoffry,
There is a standard (social) process of publishing new results in mathematics. Essentially you have to (1) write up your results, (2) submit your paper to a journal, and (3) wait while the editor (not the author) finds a reviewer who’ll check the details and decide if the paper is worth publishing or not. Not going through this process invites skepticism.
You could first try circulating a manuscript, but then you can’t expect anyone specific to spend time reading it (mathematicians are usually inundated with reviewing requests anyway). However, this should only be a preliminary thing before submitting to a journal (although it could be very helpful in identifying mistakes). There may be exceptions, such as Grigory Perelman, but they don’t need my help. If you are worried about priority, the archival site http://www.arxiv.org could help by giving a time stamp.
In order to get through to people, it would help to provide them with more information: Which ancient problem? Why is it important? Hasn’t it perhaps already been solved? If not, which new techniques led to this breakthrough? Why and how did previous attempts fail?
Henry Cohn has a very helpful advice page: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cohn/Thoughts/advice.html
konradswanepoel
25th August 2010 at 8.59 am