# Have any mathmeticians ever become millionaires?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 14, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270 "2003-11-14T17:43:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/61 "2016-06-19T22:20:05Z")
😕 “HFT operations”?
Also, please don’t stop on the “who’s smarter” stuff. It was just getting good…
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/62 "2016-06-19T22:32:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> 😕 “HFT operations”?
>
> Also, please don’t stop on the “who’s smarter” stuff. It was just getting good…
**Chronos** is right, there’s no way to compare … at least not fairly …
What was whispered in the silvering basements and isolated hilltops was that “those who got C’s in calculus went on to be biologists, those who got B’s became chemists, those with A’s became physicists … and those students asked to come up and teach the calculus class became astronomers.”
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### Author:  [@TommySeven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TommySeven)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/63 "2016-06-19T23:04:00Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> 😕 “HFT operations”?
High-frequency trading.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/64 "2016-06-19T23:08:15Z")
Well, it’s certainly true that physicists use a lot more calculus than chemists, and chemists use more than biologists. But calculus is not the entirety of intelligence.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/65 "2016-06-19T23:11:41Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> …
> What was whispered in the silvering basements…
😕 “silvering basements”?
Something with mirrors? Prints? Drug-taking?
ETA: All of the above?
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2016, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/66 "2016-06-19T23:41:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Well, it’s certainly true that physicists use a lot more calculus than chemists, and chemists use more than biologists. But calculus is not the entirety of intelligence.
But it is a stumbling block for some … especially people who struggled through Algebra … I know many really smart people and some of them just don’t “get” college math. I helped a dental student pass calculus and I know for a fact he didn’t understand it … but he passed and probably will never see it again his whole career.
It’s about public perception … if one says they’re an accounts receivable clerk … that’s kinda “meh” … one says they’re a mathematician … that’s more of an “oh really, can you fix my computer?”
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### Author:  [@LonghornDave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonghornDave)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/67 "2016-06-20T19:16:10Z")
Andrew Beal, worth greater than $10 billion. [http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrew-beal/](http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrew-beal/)
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/68 "2016-06-20T19:43:09Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> 😕 “silvering basements”?
> Something with mirrors? Prints? Drug-taking?
> ETA: All of the above?
You point your telescope straight up, unhook the mirror and lower it down into the basement … clean, polish and re-silver … crank the mirror back up and reattach to telescope … little bit of columnating and it’s like new eyeglasses.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/69 "2016-06-21T09:03:12Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#):
>
> That isn’t unheard of. Other savvy people have figured out how to beat other lotteries and casino games. This man learned how to exploit a bug in a popular Las Vegas video poker game for instance to win as much as he wanted.
>
> [Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich—Then Vegas Made Them Pay | WIRED](https://www.wired.com/2014/10/cheating-video-poker/)
I’m not even a mathematician and back in the Dark Ages I turned out to be ridiculously quick at beating a poker game several of my teachers (all male) and a bunch of male students hadn’t been able to beat in months of trying.
It was strip poker: since my brain functions are immune to the sight of boobs, I was able to analyze the game’s patterns beyond the point where the yellow chick took her shirt off (the monitor was yellow, so all the chicks were yellow ones). “How naked do you want her? You guys will pay me a soda for every time I beat her, right? Ah no, you’re the teacher, you have a salary! You pay a sandwich!”
Current algorithms have to be better than that crap, but I suspect that the main problem is the same as with the yellow chick or with card-counting and similar techniques: most people simply can’t concentrate long enough to be effective.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/70 "2016-06-21T19:50:05Z")
> [@LonghornDave](#):
>
> Andrew Beal, worth greater than $10 billion. [http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrew-beal/](http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrew-beal/)
What makes him a mathematician, besides the reporter says so?
Andy Beal is a college dropout, a self-taught math genius, and one of the smartest investors in the country. With an expert eye for market movements, Beal made a tidy sum during the Great Recession, buying distressed assets while the nation’s biggest banks were getting taxpayer bailouts. Sensing weakness in credit markets leading up to the financial crisis, Beal virtually stopped making or buying loans from 2004 to 2007. When the financial sector blew up in 2008, he snatched beaten-down assets all over the country, including debt backed by a Houston refinery, a mortgage on an office building in Ohio and home loans from Alaska to Florida. More »
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/71 "2016-06-21T20:56:35Z")
**Nava** , you have no idea how much I’m cringing at that story.
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### Author:  [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/72 "2016-06-21T21:36:46Z")
The following people have a degree in mathematics. I suspect most or all have a net worth of at least one million dollars:
Tom Lehrer, songwriter-parodist. Taught mathematics at Harvard.
Paul Vanhoeven, Hollywood film director. Phd in mathematics.
Brian May, Queen lead guitarist, Bsc mathematics and physics, PhD astrophysics.
Reed Hastings, CEO Netflix, BSc mathematics.
Art Garfunkel, musician, MA in mathematics from Columbia.
Danica McKellar, actress, BSc mathematics, summa cum laude.
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, BSc mathematics
Donald Knuth, computer scientist, Phd mathematics
Story Musgrave, astronaut, medical doctor, worked as mathematician, BSc mathematics, MBA computer programming, BA chemistry, MD medicine, MSc biophysics, MA literature.
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### Author:  [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/73 "2016-06-21T21:43:32Z")
How do you get for here…
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> What was whispered in the silvering basements and isolated hilltops was that “those who got C’s in calculus went on to be biologists, those who got B’s became chemists, those with A’s became physicists … and those students asked to come up and teach the calculus class became astronomers.”
… to here?
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> Astronomers are tons and bunches smarter than mathematicians and they get paid even less;
The first one doesn’t even mention mathematicians.
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### Author:  [@Ornery\_Bob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ornery_Bob)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/74 "2016-06-21T21:44:18Z")
FWIW, back in the sixties, we had a neighbor who was a professional math consultant and I know besides the suburban home, they owned a cabin in the mountains and a 50 ft sailboat which they kept at the Balboa Yacht Club. I’m sure his net worth was easily over a million dollars. They weren’t mega-rich but they lived quite well on his income.
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### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/75 "2016-06-21T21:49:18Z")
But how many millionaires become mathematicians?
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### Author:  [@DtypeJag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DtypeJag)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/76 "2016-06-21T23:26:58Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> You point your telescope straight up, unhook the mirror and lower it down into the basement … clean, polish and re-silver … crank the mirror back up and reattach to telescope … little bit of columnating and it’s like new eyeglasses.
To clear up a minor point that has nothing to do with this thread and at the risk of being pedantic, telescope mirrors are usually coated in the observatory because of their size and difficulty in handling them and they are typically coated with aluminum not silver. The figure on the mirror will be correct when it arrives from the shop and does not need any “polishing” which would change the figure.
Anyone caught doing this would be hung from the top of the dome.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/77 "2016-06-21T23:35:23Z")
> [@joema](#):
>
> …
> Story Musgrave, astronaut, medical doctor, worked as mathematician, BSc mathematics, MBA computer programming, BA chemistry, MD medicine, MSc biophysics, MA literature.
Heh, dude’s name is “Story.” What a loser.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2016, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/78 "2016-06-21T23:36:30Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> But how many millionaires become mathematicians?
Art Garfunkel?
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2016, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/79 "2016-06-22T00:11:04Z")
> [@DtypeJag](#):
>
> To clear up a minor point that has nothing to do with this thread and at the risk of being pedantic, telescope mirrors are usually coated in the observatory because of their size and difficulty in handling them and they are typically coated with aluminum not silver. The figure on the mirror will be correct when it arrives from the shop and does not need any “polishing” which would change the figure.
> Anyone caught doing this would be hung from the top of the dome.
Fine then … the “aluminizing vacuum chamber basement” … look, my job was to bring the pot and take shifts at the spotter 'scope … the rest was just details …
I picked this reference up off of Wikipedia though: [“Mirror, Mirror”](http://www.pfonline.com/articles/mirror-mirror), an interesting walk-through on how they redo the Palomar 200" mirror.
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### Author:  [@andrewm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andrewm)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2016, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-mathmeticians-ever-become-millionaires/213270/80 "2016-06-22T00:36:18Z")
Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman (designers of the [RSA encryption algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem))) are surely all well beyond millionaire status by now. Cryptographers are specialized mathematicians.
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