I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on the UK system but from talking with colleagues at UCL it seems to be the case that French positions are more secure and given out earlier [and this was possibly a bigger difference in the past]. I am not entirely sure about the number 32. Anecdotally, I would say many of the best people I know did not obtain tenure this early. This is something that may also vary by field—some fields are more popular, better funded because of [perceived] practical applications.
Mathematiscs is very different from other fields. For instance: it is more long-tailed, benefits from ′ deep research, deep ideas’ far more than other fields, is difficult to paralellize, has ultimate ground truth [proofs], and in large fraction of subfields [e.g. algebraic geometry, homotopy theory …] the amount of prerequisite knowledge is very large,[1] has many specialized subdisciplines , there are no empirical
All these factors suggest that the main relevant factor of production is how many positions that allow intellectuall freedom, are secure, at a young age plus how they are occupied by talented people is.
e.g. it often surprises outsiders that in certian subdisciplines of mathematics even very good PhD students will often struggle reading papers at the research frontier—even after four years of specialized study.
I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on the UK system but from talking with colleagues at UCL it seems to be the case that French positions are more secure and given out earlier [and this was possibly a bigger difference in the past]. I am not entirely sure about the number 32. Anecdotally, I would say many of the best people I know did not obtain tenure this early. This is something that may also vary by field—some fields are more popular, better funded because of [perceived] practical applications.
Mathematiscs is very different from other fields. For instance: it is more long-tailed, benefits from ′ deep research, deep ideas’ far more than other fields, is difficult to paralellize, has ultimate ground truth [proofs], and in large fraction of subfields [e.g. algebraic geometry, homotopy theory …] the amount of prerequisite knowledge is very large,[1] has many specialized subdisciplines , there are no empirical
All these factors suggest that the main relevant factor of production is how many positions that allow intellectuall freedom, are secure, at a young age plus how they are occupied by talented people is.
e.g. it often surprises outsiders that in certian subdisciplines of mathematics even very good PhD students will often struggle reading papers at the research frontier—even after four years of specialized study.