Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap
So, there's two (slightly off topic) questions this article raises that I've had for a while.  Perhaps someone who's been in academia longer than I have can enlighten me.<p>First, the article talks about experts within the field.  I've been a graduate student for about a year now, and within my field of research (molecular dynamics), I still have no idea who the "experts" are.  I see the same names frequently pop up on papers I read -- are these the experts?  I don't know of any online forums where people discuss MD; if they're out there, then they must be a secret.  I'm sure I can't just email these professors and say "hey, want to chat?"  So where does this group collaboration and unanimous identification of who the leaders in a field are come from?  Conferences are only a few times a year; I can't imagine that's where all of these people meet up and socialize.<p>And secondly, how is this mathematician "virtually unknown", as the article puts it?  The University of New Hampshire is surely a well-known institution.  I'm sure it ranks top 100-500 in the world, right?  And there's maybe 20-25 mathematics professors at each university.  I also know math is very diverse, and an expert in topology isn't going to know too much about number theory.  So within each "domain" of math, there can surely only be a few hundred in the world at any given time who are actively researching the subject.  How can he be so unknown then?