Now in the past two decades, the ethics of the scientific profession (at least among mathematicians) have become so degraded that wholesale plundering of ideas (and particularly at the expense of those in no position to defend themselves) has become almost the general rule among scientists. It is at any rate tolerated by all, including in the most glaring and ubiquitous of cases.
Under the circumstances, agreeing to play along with the practice of granting prizes and rewards would also be endorsing a spirit and a development in the scientific world that I see as unhealthy and bound to disappear in the near future, for it is so suicidal spiritually as well as intellectually and materially.
‘The mathematician who turned down a $150,000 prize’ in the ‘Le Monde’ section of The Guardian Weekly, May 15 1988 p. 17.
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