alt Hacker NewsThat’s not untrue. But it’s also a misstatement of mathematical history. Many leading mathematicians historically have been highly competitive — Gauss comes to mind. Woe betide the lesser intellect that sent Gauss some ideas. The Newton Leibniz controversy was very serious business at the time in the UK and the continent. It was considered at the least a sin to reveal that sqrt(2) was irrational to those outside Pythagoras circle.
Mathematics has always been highly competitive.
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My computer contains the prime factorization of probably several dozen (if not more) large integers, and I refuse to share them with anyone!
(Because they are my private RSA keys)
Also Andrew Wiles working in secret for 7 years out of fear of someone scooping him.
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The story of the cubic equations is another great example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_equation
Dudes straight up used to hoard solutions to equations and use them in math battles.