June Huh realized his creative juices were not being fully met by poetry. So he had to step up to Math. And June Huh came many decades after Hilbert – so Hilbert did not have an opportunity to see him.
No, distinguishing themselves from public entertainers. Private intellectuals are publishing in their discipline’s academic journals, and if you’re not in that field, you’ll never see them.
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I’ve read multiple stories about how his undergraduate students graded Feynman as relatively average when it came to teaching. Just because one is famous doesn’t mean they’re great teachers. Same with Nobel prize winners - many of them get low marks when it comes to teaching. Feynman came to my university to give a couple of lectures when I was taking introductory physics, and our physics professor suggested we go see his lectures. Feynman also visited our class. From the perspective of one taking introductory physics, I honestly didn’t find him to be all that exceptional. Neither did I find several of his books that I read to be all that fascinating, although I do remember being quite entertained when he was writing about how bad school administrators were when it came to choosing science textbooks for kids in primary and secondary education.
You and others completely missed her point.
And let me tell you, they HATE the fact of that common confusion. That’s why they push “Puget Sound” as short reference to the university.
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I agree with you that Nobel Prize winners aren’t necessarily good teachers. However, they almost always have some special insights to offer. In the case of Feynman, he’d almost always try to explain things at the most fundamental levels. As you can see in the BBC video @Chekov linked to above, Feynman explained all those macro phenomena at the basic microscopic/atomic levels (he probably would have explained at subatomic levels if he were asked about some atomic phenomena).
This isn’t how usually physics is taught and it may or may not satisfy every student who study the subject. As an example, all intro mechanics textbooks will tell you that static friction is always greater than dynamic friction. That’s sufficient for you to solve problems related to frictions, and even helps you understand how an automobile can move forward on frictional surfaces (which is based on the fact that static frictional force always exceeds dynamic frictional force on a frictional surface). But if you want to understand why static friction is greater than dynamic friction (which wouldn’t help you solve any problem in mechanics), you need to understand the issue at the atomic level.
Feynman taught students how to think more fundamentally, because that’s the way how he thought about the problems growing up. For students who also want to understand the why’s and how to think beyond the problems at the end of each chapter, Feynman would be considered a great teacher.
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A great memoirist, for sure. That’s the source of my affection for Feynman.
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“Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why?”
(direct link to the answer)
Well, the answer to #1 depends on the answer to #2, does it not? As to the latter, if the standard for “doing well” in STEM means theoretical math or physics, then what is the standard for all the STEM wiz bangs easily “doing well” in humanities? Published author? Recognized authority? Broadway Playwright or Producer? Poet Laureate? What? And why are you focusing on the courses they take in college? That goes well beyond what I was getting at.
My point is fairly straight forward and not at all mysterious. A good % of the kids who gain admission to highly-selective schools show some threshold ability in math/science accomplishment just to get in. And this remains true even in the era of test optional. Before that, what were these light-weight future sociologists going to do about the math section of the SAT?
So, you tell me. Engineering and CS? Or theoretical physics and math? Based on our travels with one kid who is at the elite math level, those are not coextensive populations.
How about this? 
There’s even a book about all the hidden math gems in the series from the author of article above, for those interested.
https://www.amazon.com/Simpsons-Their-Mathematical-Secrets/dp/1620402777
Never mind that. I’m still trying to figure out which country figured out how to teach high level math to kids with no teacher. 
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Oh, you mean you wanted to compare teachers’ salaries?
Don’t
Why does a thread that is supposed to be about the humanities attract so much attention from posters who want to discuss STEM fields? Is it possible to have a conversation about the humanities without discussing science, engineering and math? If not, I wonder why. This is not meant to be a snarky question. I am genuinely curious because as I glance through the posts, it seems like at least half of them are focused on STEM fields, particularly some of the most recent posts that do not mention the humanities at all.
If we are going to discuss the relationship between the humanities and other fields, I’d love to talk about the arts and social sciences as well as interdisciplinary teaching on the K-12 and perhaps college level. Rather than comparing different fields, I think it is interesting to contemplate if scholars and practitioners can collaborate effectively across various disciplines in the academy as well as outside it. How can these collaborations be harnessed to solve important issues and challenges faced by future generations? How can they be harnessed to improve our quality life and to deepen our well-being?
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It doesn’t sound like I should!
I agree with you that there’re different types of talents in different areas. Nature works in mysterious ways to ensure this ultimate diversity. One side of brain develops faster than the other side for some people; and the opposite side develops faster for others. For a lucky few, both sides develop fast enough that they have a choice. It’s counterproductive to force someone who is inclined in one direction into the opposite direction. It’s rarely productive to work against the nature.
There’s also a secondary question of the degree of inclination. It’s a little more difficult to answer. My S, for example, is one of the lucky few who have a choice and he decided eventually, on his own, while we were touring colleges, that he would choose STEM. It sounds like one of your kids also have this choice. Good luck to her/him.
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I had the good fortune to have had five Nobel winners as teachers. A couple of them won while I was taking their classes, the rest a number of years later. Only one of them wasn’t a great teacher, and I think that was because his area was so specialized, but he was still a likeable guy. They tended to be good teachers, but not exceptional ones.
Nobel Prize winners (excluding Peace Prize winners), Field Medalists, Turing Award winners all have done something not only pioneering but also profound in their respective academic fields. They tended to have made other considerable contributions to their fields and didn’t win these awards by accident. They may or may not be great communicators, but they all tend to have some valuable, and often unique, insights to impart.
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But not necessarily to undergrads. The one Fields Medalist I had as a lecturer was renowned for being tedious and making it hard to understand what he was talking about.
Stephen Hawking wasn’t a great teacher either (I went to his original Brief History of Time lectures on which the book was based). And he was a jerk, he ran over my wife in his wheelchair…
Anyway I thought this thread was supposed to be about humanities? Can we talk about the faults of Nobel Prize winners in those disciplines?
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Wait… Stephen Hawkin has never won a Nobel Prize. And I don’t believe he was ever nominated for a Nobel Prize.
That leaves only the Nobel Laureates in Literature. I’d love to hear how many of them are actually university professors and students’ impressions of them as teachers.