Top all-time · #377
Timothy Gowers
Personal blog · gowers.wordpress.commathsciencewriting
Timothy Gowers writes Gowers's Weblog, a personal blog at gowers.wordpress.com about math, science and writing. Since 2007, 142 different Hacker News readers have linked it 219 times, most often “Discrete Analysis – A new type of math journal”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-16, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Gowers' blog for posts on academic publishing and open-access journals, including the costs of Discrete Analysis, and for his advice on teaching mathematics with examples first.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called informative, a good starting point and interesting reading; one commenter calls a post the best retort ever.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Mathematics related discussions
Most-linked posts?
- Discrete Analysis – A new type of math journal10 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2015-09-10
- Discrete Analysis (arXiv overlay journal) has been launched8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-03-01
- A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2026-05-08
- Thoughts about the Leiden Declaration5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-07-26
- Elsevier – My part in its downfall (2012)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-03-05
- /4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2007-12-31
- How should mathematics be taught to non-mathematicians?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-06-09
- Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-01-21
- Is massively collaborative mathematics possible?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-01-27
- Member of The European Union4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-03
What Hacker News says?
You're right that the case is not so clear cut since both sides were using LLMs. And yet it's still being seen as a major confrontation between the mathematical community and the AI industry because Buckmaster is a prominent member of the community and has taken pains to follow mathematical norms while OpenAI has not (with the most flagrant violation being the insistence on removing Alpöge from authorship, simply be…
Comment linking /2026/07/26/thoughts-about-the-leiden-declaration/
on “Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]”Submitted Member of The European Union as a story · 329 points
HN discussionI wrote something [0] that might answer a bit a few weeks ago. Today's slopdrop certainly is challenging my stubbornness, but everything I've seen so far indicates that these (hugely impressive, world historic) capabilities won't extend past verifiable domains. Math yields especially impressive results because it so broad and deep that essentially no person can know of all of its parts; pretraining and deep search c…
Comment linking /2026/08/12/what-sort-of-maths-are-llms-good-at/
on “Sharing AI progress in mathematics”Submitted Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall as a story · 287 points
HN discussionDigital archival of PDFs weighing a few hundred KBs to a few MBs is definitely a solved problem. And there are already arXiv overlay journals out there, and platforms supporting them. Tim Gowers' (Fields medalist) blog posts on this topic are quite informative: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an... https://gowers.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/advances-in-combinat... Highlights: $10 per submissio…
Comment linking /2019/10/30/advances-in-combinatorics-fully-launched/
on “MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations”Submitted Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter as a story · 286 points
HN discussionThe system works smoothly for them. Not much incentive to change it unless they are prepared to think a bit more widely. One great exception is Timothy Gowers. "it should in principle be possible to run a journal for almost nothing. The legacy publishers (as they are sometimes called) frequently call people naive for suggesting this, so it is important to have actual examples to prove it, and Discrete Analysis is se…
Comment linking /2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-launched/
on “Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone”Submitted Why isn’t the fundamental theorem of arithmetic obvious? (2011) as a story · 225 points
HN discussionAcademics in some fields have been starting independent open-access journals, sometimes with the explicit goal of replacing Elsevier journals in particular. https://gowers.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/the-elsevier-boycott...
Comment linking /2013/01/28/the-elsevier-boycott-one-year-on/
on “Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone”Submitted Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed? as a story · 191 points
HN discussionYep. Discrete Analysis is perhaps one of the best known of those. https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an... https://discreteanalysisjournal.com/
Comment linking /2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/
on “Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal”Submitted Elsevier journals – some facts as a story · 184 points
HN discussionThis is the best retort to the bag-escaping cat ever: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/why-i-didnt-sign-the... "Nothing is worse to the demise of a society, than people who want to convince you that the cat is out of the bag and will not go back in, while the cat is being violently shook out of the bag at the same time."
Comment linking /2026/09/17/why-i-didnt-sign-the-fields-medallists-letter/
on “ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector”Submitted An automatic theorem proving project as a story · 163 points
HN discussionReviewers do not get paid. In many scientific fields, authors use LaTeX together with a well-defined style to format their own articles. The cost can be minimal, as has been demonstrated by many new journals (see https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an... for an analysis by an expert in his field who started what may very well become the most prestigious journal in that field and is freely acces…
Comment linking /2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/
on “Should All Research Papers Be Free?”Submitted How should mathematics be taught to non-mathematicians? (2012) as a story · 141 points
HN discussionSee the second link for how it is considered "caving completely": none of their own goals was achieved. https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/
Comment linking /2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/
on “Germany vs. Elsevier: universities win temporary free journal access”Submitted Elsevier journals: has anything changed? as a story · 126 points
HN discussionThe stated goals of the German universities are: • Teilnehmereinrichtungen: alle zur Teilnahme an Allianz- und Nationallizenzen berechtigten Einrichtungen in Deutschland. • Die DEAL-Einrichtungen haben dauerhaften Volltextzugriff auf das gesamte Titel-Portfolio (E-Journals) der ausgewählten Verlage. • Alle Publikationen von Autorinnen und Autoren aus deutschen Einrichtungen werden automatisch Open Access geschaltet…
Comment linking /2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/
on “Germany vs. Elsevier: universities win temporary free journal access”Submitted Elsevier – My part in its downfall (2012) as a story · 111 points
HN discussionMore importantly, prestige journals gateway career advancement, and in some cases, degree attainment, within numerous disciplines. This is covered extensively by advocates including Tim Gowers (maths) and Bjoern Brembs, both of whom blog heavily: < https://gowers.wordpress.com/category/Elsevier/ > < https://bjoern.brembs.net/tag/open-access/ > More so for some fields than others: physics, chemistry, and biology are…
Comment linking /category/Elsevier/
on “MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract”Submitted The Elsevier boycott one year on as a story · 105 points
HN discussionHere's Timothy Gowers, a Fields Medalist, on the principle of giving examples first: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/my-favourite-pedagog... https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/examples-first-ii/ (There are also comments by those who disagree.) I looked at a couple of instances to see how one of my favourite authors, Knuth, explains things. If you look at how he introduces BDDs (Binary Decision Diagrams)…
Comment linking /2007/10/24/examples-first-ii/
on “I don’t understand Graph Theory”Submitted How Craig Barton wishes he’d taught maths as a story · 98 points
HN discussionIt's not a coordination problem, it's an apathy problem. Boards that care can and do succeed in carrying out precisely the plan I just laid out. See for example https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-...
Comment linking /2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/
on “It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is”Submitted When is proof by contradiction necessary? as a story · 81 points
HN discussiontim gowers's blog is very informative on the subject: https://gowers.wordpress.com/category/elsevier/ this one is a good starting point: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-...
Comment linking /2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/
on “Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier”- ot · 2013-04-07
Submitted A second experiment concerning mathematical writing as a story · 77 points
HN discussion Here's a blog post discussing this: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/has-an-uncomfortable... Here's a "Statement addressing unfounded allegations." by the Mathematical Intelligencer: https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html And here's a "Statement in response to Ted Hill's unfounded allegations." by the New York Journal of Mathematics: https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement
Comment linking /2018/09/09/has-an-uncomfortable-truth-been-suppressed/
on “Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole”Submitted When are two proofs essentially the same? (2007) as a story · 72 points
HN discussion
