Page 16 - Textos de Matemática Vol. 39

6 GRACIANO DE OLIVEIRA
I do not wish to end without a word about the great obsession of our time: the building of hierarchies for mathematicians, and scientists in general (artists have escaped so far), by counting the number of papers. In 100 years time historians will have difficulty understanding how so many intelligent people had so firm a belief in so obviously false things. I believe Marques de S´a shares my view. I think he is a good example illustrating the absurdity of the obsession. If, for the sake of comparison, I had to place in one pan of a scale the paper [2], and in the other 10 or 15 papers of the kind of many I see published in “weighty journals”, I would not hesitate to give my vote to the lone one. It remains to define “weighty journal”. As everyone knows, it’s a journal that publishes weighty papers, and a weighty paper is one that gets published in a weighty journal.
On this note I finish, and I send my greetings to Eduardo Marques de Sa´, a leading member of the Portuguese Linear Algebra school.
References
[1] Graciano de Oliveira, Interlacing inequalities. Matrix groups, Linear Algebra Appl. 162: 297-307 (1992).
[2] E. Marques de S´a, Imbedding conditions for λ-matrices, Linear Algebra Appl. 24: 33-50 (1979).
[3] D. Carlson and E. Marques de S´a, Generalized minimax and interlacing theorems, Linear and Multilinear Algebra 15: 77-103 (1984).
[4] R. C. Thompson, Interlacing inequalities for invariant factors, Linear Algebra Appl. 24: 1-32 (1979).
[5] H. Whitney, On the abstract properties of linear dependence, Amer. J. Math. 57: 509-533 (1935).
[6] I. Zaballa, Matrices with prescribed rows and invariant factors, Linear Algebra Appl. 87: 113-146 (1987).
[7] I. Zaballa, Interlacing inequalities and control theory, Linear Algebra Appl. 101: 9-31 (1988).
Departamento de Matema´tica Universidade de Coimbra 3001-454 Coimbra, Portugal E-mail address: gdoliv@mat.uc.pt