The Mathematician's Shiva

by Stuart Rojstaczer

Whoever has the best visceral understanding of what seems to most to be abstract and obtuse wins in the battle to solve seemingly impossible mathematical problems.

Why am I making your life difficult? Because while maybe math is shit to you, it isn’t to me, and it wasn’t to my mother or father. It is like breathing to us, and to ignore math in this story would be akin to listening to Frank Zappa without ever having taken hallucinogens, an incomplete experience.

Think of the language of mathematics as shorthand that has been around for centuries, the equivalent of teenage texting, but for geeks. Yes, I know you don’t know half the text abbreviations that your teenage children use, but you can figure out their argot if pressed, can you not? You can figure out this one as well.

When I see the Navier-Stokes equation, it comes to life for me. It’s not just an abstract combination of symbols that will eventually produce numbers. It is a living and breathing description of fluids dancing in space to whatever may be whipping them around.

While there are, I know from personal experience, some reasonable mathematicians, they are not at the forefront of their profession but mere worker bees. Even most worker bees in mathematics are hopeless as fully functioning human beings.

I don’t believe a spoiled child, even one encouraged to pursue the intellectual world, can ever be anything more than a second-rate mathematician. This is what war gave me, a life of the mind that would sustain me almost always.

People add ‘sciences’ to a department name only when they are worried they aren’t really scientists.

I have no problem with self-righteousness, and think it has a place when it’s an honest expression of the ability to withstand hardship without complaint. If there is one hardship Russians can endure, even celebrate, it’s cold, and the deprivation associated with that cold. Every hundred years or so another country forgets about this special Russian talent, declares war, and pays dearly for their naiveté and hubris.

Maybe the most insulting thing you can say to a mathematician is something to the effect that math is all about numbers. Arithmetic is all about numbers and none of the people in the room gave a damn about arithmetic.

Her mind was not in the here and now but was usually preoccupied, just like my mind, just like my father’s, and just like my mother’s. This habit of only sort of being present can drive nonacademics crazy. But it’s the only way I know that anyone can solve intellectually difficult problems. It’s a constant processing of ideas and techniques in the background that happens even when you dream.

To Americans, the outward display of intelligence is considered unseemly. The Donald Trumps of the world can boast about their penthouses and Ferraris, their women can wear baubles the size of Nebraska, and no one says boo. If you have money, you’re almost always expected to flaunt it. But intellect? This is something else entirely. Women, especially, are supposed to play dumb.