The dispensable mathematician

During the summer I gave a talk at PROMYS and afterwards had dinner with a bunch of the undergraduate teaching assistants. At one point I said, “The wonderful thing about math is that while of course we’re proud of what we do, we also know that everything we make and understand would be made and understood by someone else, in time, if we hadn’t done it. So it’s not really about our own personal glory, it’s about contributing to the communal enterprise.” The woman next to me looked very stricken. I said, “That was supposed to be inspiring, not depressing.” She said, “No, it’s depressing.”

I can understand her reaction in the abstract! The feeling of wanting to be unique and indispensable, to know that the world would be quite different without your mark on it. And I do believe that as human beings, each of us is unique and indispensable. But as mathematicians, no. I don’t think we are and I don’t feel it as a loss not to be. Nor do I think our dispensability is cause to feel an ounce less pride in the things we build.