I’ve just received an email from the Royal Society with subject “Nominate a brilliant mathematician for the Sylvester Medal”. They could have said “outstanding”, or “top”, or “world-leading”, but they chose “brilliant”. Would that have been the choice for a medal in physics, or in biology?

There’s a footnote in An Applied Mathematician’s Apology on this theme:

I’ve served on committees to award fellowships for pure mathematicians. To explain why a candidate is deserving, a referee will begin by making an attempt to describe the substance of their achievements, but this is hard. Pretty soon the letter moves away from substance and resorts to asserting how brilliant the candidate is. Every discipline judges people in part by their brilliance, but no other takes it as far as mathematics.

[4 February 2025]