我很久以前翻译了陶哲轩在其它数学家博客上的部分评论,现在把它发布在这里.
链接：http://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/is-massively-collaborative-mathematics-possible/.
译文：
对于别人我不好讲，但是对于我自己的研究来说，至少有一半的论文是与另一位或更多的作者合作完成的。而且那些我自认为最棒的作品，它们事实上都是合作完成的。
当然，每个数学家都有自己独特的研究风格，这对于整个数学来说是有益的。但是，我认为21世纪的数学家与19世纪和20世纪初的数学家至少在两个重要的方面有区别。第一，现代交流技术的出现，特别是互联网的到来，使得在不同地方的数学家之间的合作容易的多了。（比如，如果没有互联网，我的大多数合作将不复存在或者至少效率会大大降低）。人们能够预见下一代的技术在这个方面能产生更大影响。（或许该项目会成为一个例子(指博主在文中提到的项目——译者注)，其它已有的例子包括维基百科和在线整数列百科）。
第二，数学的焦点已经显著地转移到横跨好几个数学领域的跨领域工作上,而不是那些需要对某个领域有精深知识的专门工作。在这一点上，不同的数学家对于某个问题的合作研究显然占据更大优势（需要承认的是，19世纪的很多数学已经跨领域了，但是那时候的数学范围狭窄的多，那时一个好的数学家同时掌握好几门领域是可能的，但这在现在难办多了）
迄今为止，虽然我参与的最大的合作只涉及5个人，然而研究的力度在5人状态已经大大地加强。（特别是当5个人呆在一起的时候）.一人可以抛出一个观点，让另外两个讨论，第四人在一边评论与纠正，第五位做记录。联系被更迅速地创建、错误被更快地发现、想法被更有效地澄清（经常，我发现我的其中一位合作者作为一个“翻译者”的角色出现，提炼另一位合作者的令人兴奋的灵感。这样子或许达不到神奇的程度，但是确实会更有效率，而且事实上十分有意思。
原文：
I can’t speak for others, but as for my own research, at least half of my papers are joint with one or more authors, and amongst those papers that I consider among my best work, they are virtually all joint.
Of course, each mathematician has his or her own unique research style, and this diversity is a very healthy thing for mathematics as a whole. But I think 21st century mathematics differs from 19th and early 20th century mathematics in at least two important respects. Firstly, the advent of modern communication technologies, most notably the internet, has made it significantly easier to collaborate with other mathematicians who are not at the same physical location. (Most of my collaborations, for instance, would be non-existent, or at least significantly less productive, without the internet.) One can imagine the next generation of technologies having an even stronger impact in this direction (with this project possibly being an example; other extant examples include Wikipedia and the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences).
Secondly, the main focus of mathematical activity has shifted significantly towards interdisciplinary work spanning several fields of mathematics, as opposed to specialist work which requires deep knowledge of just one field of mathematics, and for such problems it is more advantageous to have more than one mathematician working on the problem. (Admittedly, much of 19th century mathematics was similarly interdisciplinary, but mathematics had a much smaller diameter back then, and it was possible for a good mathematician to master the state of the art in several subfields simultaneously. This is significantly more difficult to do nowadays.)
The largest collaboration I have been in to date has involved five people – but already the dynamics of research change dramatically at that scale (especially when all five people are in the same room at once). One can toss an idea out there and have it debated by two other collaborators, while a fourth makes comments and corrections from the sidelines, and a fifth takes notes. Connections are made much faster, errors are detected quicker, and thoughts are clarified much more efficiently (often, I find one of my collaborators acting as a “translator” to distill an excited inspiration of another). It may not be “magic”, but it is certainly productive, and actually quite a lot of fun.