I don’t see what difference it can make now to reveal that I passed high-school math only because I cheated. I could add and subtract and multiply and divide, but I entered the wilderness when words became equations and x’s and y’s. Sounds like me. :) On test days, I sat next to Bob Isner or Bruce Gelfand or Ted Chapman or Donny Chamberlain—smart boys whose handwriting I could read—and divided my attention between his desk and the teacher’s eyes.
Having skipped me, the talent for math concentrated extravagantly in one of my nieces, Amie Wilkinson, a professor at the University of Chicago. From Amie I first heard about Yitang Zhang, a solitary, part-time calculus teacher at the University of New Hampshire who received several prizes, including a MacArthur award in September, for solving a problem that had been open for more than a hundred and fifty years.
More @ The New Yorker
I tried to read his paper and am proud to say that out of its 115 pages I got 1/4th (that's a fraction) through the first.
ReplyDeleteWell, my dear brother, that was 100% more than I got through, but that is understandable......:)
DeleteHappy Birthday, Brockie Boy !!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Henry Hen House. :)
DeleteYer' Birthday?? Well here's hoping that it was a happy one Brock👍
ReplyDeleteThank you and it was as Dixie wrote "Happy 22nd Birthday" on my birthday card! :)
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