Reminds me of the late lamented Pertti Lounesto who made himself quite unpopular by looking for counterexamples to some accepted proofs and posting about them repeatedly on Usenet. See http://users.tkk.fi/ppuska/mirror/Lounesto/counterexamples.h... for example.
Lounesto was a controversial and sometimes reviled figure, but I (purely as a non-mathematician and sometime reader of his posts) was very sorry to hear of his death in a swimming incident about 10 years ago now. Nice that his website is still available though.
I tend to agree with his idea that it's valuable to search for counterexamples to newer proofs - a sort of application of Popperian principles in the mathematical domain I suppose. I've no idea on the validity of his claims about specific counterexamples, though.
Lounesto was a controversial and sometimes reviled figure, but I (purely as a non-mathematician and sometime reader of his posts) was very sorry to hear of his death in a swimming incident about 10 years ago now. Nice that his website is still available though.
I tend to agree with his idea that it's valuable to search for counterexamples to newer proofs - a sort of application of Popperian principles in the mathematical domain I suppose. I've no idea on the validity of his claims about specific counterexamples, though.