White Coat Notes

MIT professor wins major international math prize
There's a famous etching called "Ascending and Descending" by M.C. Escher that shows people circling a castle courtyard on stairs that always go up. Everyone knows the scene is impossible -- how could stairs continue to rise and still form a circle? -- but there it is, right before their eyes.

It took mathematicians Isadore Singer of MIT and Sir Michael Francis Atiyah of the University of Edinburgh to prove such things are impossible. The Atiyah-Singer index theorem calculates the number of solutions to complex formulas about nature based on the geometry of surrounding space, an idea that is difficult to explain but amazingly useful in both math and physics.

Last week, the two mathemeticians learned they will share an $875,000 award as winners of the second Abel Prize, which some hope will come to be seen as a Nobel Prize for math. Declaring the duo among the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said their work "was instrumental in repairing a rift between the worlds of pure mathematics and theoretical particle physics."

Singer, 79, an institute professor who is on leave at the University of California at Santa Barbara this year, was modest about the distinction. "Most of all I appreciate the attention mathematics will be getting," he said in a statement. "It's well deserved because mathematics is so basic to science and engineering."

King Harald of Norway will present the Abel Prize on May 25.

Silencing debate on the nursing shortage
Brandeis University sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg couldn't believe her good luck when the influential group that evaluates the nation's hospitals asked her to lead a conference about the nursing crisis. Weinberg, author of the book, "Code Green: Money-driven Hospitals and the Dismantling of Nursing," would get a chance to make her case about the plight of nurses directly to executives who could reverse the tide.

But, within 24 hours of advertising the by-phone conference, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations pulled the plug on her April 15 appearance after hospital officials complained about Weinberg's perceived bias.

Commission spokeswoman Charlene Hill said the title of Weinberg's book dismayed some callers because it "cast a kind of disparaging light on hospitals." It probably didn't help that the commission's e-mail promoting the event promised Weinberg would deliver "a stinging indictment" of hospital practices.

Nursing advocates say the about-face shows how defensive hospitals are about the growing nursing shortage, which has prompted legislators in Massachusetts to push a bill that would require minimum nursing levels. Weinberg has publicly supported the staffing legislation, but her book, based on research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been well-reviewed for its even-handed approach.

"I'm hardly like the flaming activist," Weinberg said. "I'm really disappointed the message is not getting out there."

Medical residents: Making matches under a cloud
A legal cloud hangs over the system that assigns medical school graduates to residency programs at teaching hospitals, but that didn't prevent hospitals from picking a record 20,012 newly minted doctors during Match Day 2004.

Officials with the National Resident Matching Program, which runs the computerized system, said the results show that neither students nor hospitals have lost confidence in it, despite an antitrust lawsuit filed by former residents charging that "matching" prevents them from negotiating their own deals, depressing both wages and working conditions for residents. Last month, US District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman refused the Match Program's motion to derail the lawsuit and take the issues to arbitration.

But a spokeswoman for the American Medical Students Association, which wants residents to have more bargaining power, was unimpressed by the placement numbers. "It's a monopoly," said Kim Becker, noting that would-be residents have to join the match since hospitals won't negotiate with them individually.

Although about 5,000 graduates were denied matches, there's no need to worry about those completing Harvard Medical School. All 168 graduates made it into residency programs, according to school officials. The most popular specialties: internal medicine (41), followed by pediatrics (21), radiology (15), and emergency medicine (11).

SCOTT ALLEN