Observacions i context
- What does the prisoner paradox mean?
Situation in which two or more natural or legal persons, trying to independently choose the best alternative to follow, end up in a worse position than the one they would have reached if they had cooperated from the beginning.
This problem has interesting applications in social sciences, political sciences and within the field of international relations.
The theoretical conclusion of the prisoner's dilemma is one reason why, in many countries, judicial agreements are prohibited.
- The prisoner's dilemma scenario is often used to illustrate the problem of two states involved in an arms race. Both will reason that they have two options: either increase military spending, or reach an agreement to reduce their weapons. Neither state can be sure that the other will abide by the agreement; thus, both will lean toward military expansion. The irony is that both states seem to act rationally, but the result is completely irrational.
- Another interesting example occurs in cycling. Consider two cyclists who, in the middle of the race, are escaping and are found at a great distance from the peloton. If they both work together in turns, the peloton will not catch up. If neither cyclist makes an effort to stay ahead, the peloton will catch up quickly. An oft-seen example is a single rider doing all the work keeping both away from the peloton. In the end, this will probably lead to a victory for the second rider who has had a lower attrition race.
- Julia Bowman had a difficult childhood. Her mother died when she was 2 years old. At the age of 10 she contracted rheumatic fever, that forced her to spend a year isolated from others, missing two years of schooling; and her father committed suicide for losing all their savings as a result of the Great Depression, when she was 18 years old.
Despite missing two years of schooling, when she returned to school, she studied mathematics and physics, being the only woman to attend these classes. She graduated in 1936 with honours in science and was awarded the Bausch-Lomb Honorary Medal for excellent results in mathematics and science. She had great family support, in particular from her sister, Constance, and her adoptive mother, Edenia, who always encouraged her to continue her studies.
Julia Browman and her older sister Constance remained close, and both contributed to the history of mathematics. Constance was a journalist and she was a well-known science biographer—particularly of her sister [Julia: A Life in Mathematics, Mathematical Association of America, 1996]– and mathematics communicator.
She died in 1985 as a result of leukaemia. Her husband, Raphael Mitchel Robinson, established the Julia Bowman Robinson Scholarship Fund for graduate students in mathematics in Berkeley in 1986.
- Julia Bowman's predecessors are Theano of Crotone (6th century BC) mathematician and philosopher; Hypatia of Alexandria (360-415), mathematician and philosopher; Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684), mathematician and philosopher; Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), mathematician, physicist and philosopher; Laura Maria Catharina Bassi (1711-1778), scientist, poetess and philosopher; Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799), mathematician, linguist and philosopher; Sophie Germain (1776-1831), mathematician; and Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867-1934), physicist, mathematician and chemist.
- Her contemporaries were the mathematicians Jacqueline Ferrand (1918-2014), Katherine Johnson (1918-2020), Paulette Libermann (1919-2007), Vera Nikolaevna Kublanovskaya (1920-2012) and Kateryna Yushchenko (1919-2001), mathematician and computer scientist.
Other important female scientists of the early 20th century are Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), biologist; Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), chemist; Inge Lehmann (1888-1993) geologist and seismologist; Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994), chemist; Mary Leakey (1913-1996), anthropologist; Marie Tharp (1920-2006), geologist and cartographer; Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000), inventor; and Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), computer scientist and admiral, among others.