A Math Retreat

One of the last gifts my dad gave me before he passed on was to pay for me to attend a Buddhist meditation retreat. We were living in Eugene, Oregon at the time, and it was a few hours north in Washington. We meditated eight hours a day for a week. It was intense -- both physically and mentally -- but it was a great experience. I still think about it, and when I fret the loss of my meditation practice, things that happened and were said to me at that retreat come to mind.

What does this have to do with my time in Finland this year? Well, I've been thinking since I arrived over a week ago that my time here is like an intensive mathematics research retreat. I've worked basically all day every day, and have experienced the same emotional roller coaster that I did during that week in Washington all of those years ago.

People often ask me, What is math research? It's a hard question to answer, and I always do a bad job with it. It's tempting to zero in on certain problems I've worked on, but I'm beginning to take a broader view. This may lead to even worse answers to the question -- you can decide.

There are many areas of human endeavor that have stood the test of time because they are so useful to our species. Some examples are art, religion, politics, war, biology, chemistry, medicine, physics, mathematics, history, philosophy, literature, law, theatre, and sport.

Mathematics is one of those that has been around for millenia, and because it's so useful, many humans, and some of the greatest minds ever, have dedicated themselves to its progression. This is why Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen far it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

So mathematics can be thought of as a great edifice that is the culmination of thousands of years of human effort. Much like the edifices associated with the other topics in the list above, it is hard for the uninitiated (and even the initiated) to fathom.

So in that light, I view myself as little more than a minion, in a long line of minions, giving much of my work life to pushing the edifice of math forward. Like one of the men that built the great pyramids (slaves, mind you), helping to move just one giant block part of the way.