(Roughly) Daily

Mathematics, like life, is complicated. But, for those who do mathematics, it is a source of joy. “The main thing is just astonishment that there’s such a rich world out there—a wonderful, abstract, very beautiful, simple world,” [John] Conway said. “It’s like Pizarro standing on the shores of the Pacific or whatever. . . . I can sit here in this chair and go on a voyage of exploration. A very different voyage of exploration, but, still, there are things to be discovered, things to be seen, that you can quite easily be the first person ever to see.”

So many of us now sit in our rooms, bound in space while time drips away. It can be a bit of a comfort to know that, as long as you are able to sit still and think, your creative spirit can be an engine of exploration. On their journeys, these playful, curious mathematicians discovered Monsters and numbers so large that they can hardly be written down. We’re grateful for the lively stories of their expeditions, and for the thinkers who led them. They’ll be missed…

John Conway, Ronald Graham, and Freeman Dyson all explored the world with their minds. Dan Rockmore (@dan_rockmore) celebrates “Three Mathematicians We Lost in 2020.”

Special bonus: an interview with an heir to Dyson– that’s to say, an important mathematician who’s also a gifted “translator”– Steven Strogatz.

* Henri Poincaré

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As we share their amazement, we might we might spare a thought for Max Born; he died on this date in 1970.  A German physicist and Nobel Laureate, he coined the phrase “quantum mechanics” to describe the field in which he made his greatest contributions.  But beyond his accomplishments as a practitioner, he was a master teacher whose students included Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg– both of whom became Nobel Laureates before their mentor– and  J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Less well-known is that Born, who died in 1970, was the grandfather of Australian phenom and definitive Sandy-portrayer Olivia Newton-John.

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