Return to story index
e-mail author
(edward@ordman.net)
Author Info
This story has appeared in the Christian
Science
Monitor.
There
is
profit in being a foreign prophet
April 30, 2004
A prophet, according to the old saying, is
without honor in his
own country. I've benefited occasionally from the converse. If
you go far
enough from home, you may get more respect. Or maybe it is
just a question of
being in the right place at exactly the right time.
I've had a respectable career as a college
professor of
mathematics and computer science, but a few of my most
rewarding experiences
seem undeserved. Yes, in a sense, I'd done my homework, but
the rewards were
pure gifts. I was reminded of one of these instances recently
when I attended a
conference held at the University of California at Santa
Barbara in honor of
the 80th birthday of one of my mentors, Morris Newman.
In 1962 I was a college undergraduate with a
summer job, an
internship, at the National Bureau of Standards. Another
student, Harriet Fell
(now a professor at Northeastern University), and I assisted
Dr. Newman in some
of his research. For example, we did programming to compute
tables of some
functions he was studying. He was kind enough to include us as
coauthors of a
published paper that resulted.
By 1965 I was a graduate student. My university
required that I
be able to read French and German, but my father insisted that
I ought to be
able to speak them, too. As a result, he partially subsidized
my trip to Europe
that summer to practice my languages. I spent 12 weeks
enrolled in language
courses - six weeks in Paris and six in Munich.
While in Paris, I wanted also to do a little
mathematics. In
some ignorance of how French universities were organized, I
went to the
Sorbonne and asked directions to a mathematics library.
Arriving there, I found
it had closed stacks and one had to ask at the counter for the
books one
wanted. I made my request, in rather halting French, and the
man behind the
counter looked up and down at me rather disapprovingly.
"This is a library for serious mathematical
researchers," he explained, "and is not open to young
beginning students."
I certainly was young, and probably by his
standards a beginner.
But then an older man came and returned several volumes to the
counter. And by
a freak coincidence, one of those volumes was the journal
issue containing the
paper of which I was a coauthor - my one professional
publication at that time.
I couldn't resist. I reached over, took the
volume, flipped it
open to the correct page, and pointed to my name. The man
behind the counter
looked at it, at my name on the book request, blushed, and got
me the books I
wanted. The timing was so perfect I couldn't have set it up if
I had planned to
- which I had not.
I still have no idea if I actually belonged in
that library, but
it solved my problem of library access during that stay in
Paris.
In the early 1980s, I was teaching at what is
now the University
of Memphis. A very distinguished Hungarian mathematician, Paul
Erdos, came to
town to lecture. We got along well and wrote several papers
together over the
next few years.
In 1991 my wife and I were sightseeing in
Ukraine (then still
the Soviet Union). We were part of an Elderhostel group,
spending a week at
each of several teachers colleges. We studied some local
history and spoke with
the local student teachers so they could practice their
English and learn a bit
more about Americans. One afternoon my wife and I left the
group to explore a
local university, Odessa Polytechnic.
We found the mathematics department and went
into a professor's
office to introduce ourselves. What mathematics was he
interested in? It was
clear from his desk: He was following some lines of research
of Paul Erdos. And
among the papers on his desk was one I had written with Dr.
Erdos. I was
suddenly promoted from the category of tourist to the category
of visiting
dignitary.
It was a difficult time in Ukraine. Prices had
recently
quadrupled, the start of a hyperinflation that later caused
them to rise by a
multiple near 1,000. The university as a whole was suffering,
as were the
faculty. It was two months before the August 1991 coup against
Mikhail
Gorbachev and the ensuing dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Trouble was in the
air. The sudden arrival of a friendly American couple was
cause for
celebration, and everyone got on the telephone.
That evening the department held a potluck
supper, with my wife
and me as guests of honor. It was a wonderful chance to talk
of many things,
and we learned much more about the Soviet Union than we could
ever have
planned. ("You mean," someone asked, "George was at the
lecture
this morning? He is the KGB man on the faculty, and I suppose
the poor man
still has to go to every lecture where a foreigner is
present.")
I am not, by most standards, a noted
mathematician. I'm never
going to win a major prize from either the mathematical
societies or the
computer societies. But I have had friends who did, and I've
been to the
dinners afterward. None of them had half as much fun as we
did, that night in
Odessa.
Doing the work may be needed, but a lot of the
rewards come as
unexpected, unpredictable gifts.