Math, Teaching, and Other Items of Interest
Archive for May 2011
Riddle 1. If you take a cab to the airport at 3:30 am Sunday morning and you get stuck in a traffic jam, where are you?
Answer. In Manila.
Riddle 2. If you take a direct flight from Manila to Detroit, why do you go through security twice? Continue reading ‘Riddling Back to the US’ »
From the moment you get off the plane, you experience the friendliness of the Filipinos. My host Fidel Nemenzo, President of the South-East Asia Mathematical Association and famous student revolutionary against the Marcos dictatorship, I have found to be also an extraordinary teacher and gourmet cook. Malou Lopez, who worked briefly as Williams College Mathematics Department secretary, arranged a splendid lunch for me with the College of Business Administration.
The closest hotel to Universiti Malaysia Terengganu is the Gem Beach Resort on the South China Sea, here pictured from my private balcony. The water is clean and warm, with a pleasant breeze off the sea.
Herbert Federer, one of the founders of geometric measure theory, was a good friend to me. I met him at my first conference, at Park City, Utah, as a graduate student in 1977. My advisor at Princeton, Fred Almgren, was one of his graduate students and had shared fond memories with us students.
The first talk was completely incomprehensible to me, and I was afraid I would be exposed as a mathematical ignoramus. I hoped somehow to sneak quietly out of the lecture room. As we filed out in twos from opposite sides of the room, I was alarmed to find myself paired with the famous Federer. As he turned to me I prepared for the inevitable humiliation. His words: “I didn’t understand a word of that talk. Let’s go for a walk and you can tell me about your thesis.” From that day I found him a good friend. Continue reading ‘Herbert Federer’ »
Daniel Quillen, who won the Field Medal in 1978, passed on April 30, 2011. As a young Moore Instructor at MIT, I went to his office to ask him for advice on doing research. He said that to read a paper and learn something new, he had to find a way to get at it. He said it often lay on his desk for a week or two before he could find a way to approach it.
Incidentally, he was an excellent lecturer. His blackboards, including his writing, were works of art.
Mathematics and academics are respected and popular in Singapore. Supermarket check-out counters feature math “revision papers” (apparently Singaporean for “review guides”; first photo) and top students do product endorsements on billboards (second photo).
Photos courtesy Helmer Aslaksen, my gracious host.
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