Mathematicians are fascinated by the elegance and beauty of the ideas behind mathematical theories. Their personal stories are equally important and interesting as their discoveries.
In the past few years, I have been involved in several projects concerning mathematical education in Africa.
I was advised that a good place to start, if I wanted to explore the African mathematical landscape, was AIMS. That’s the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, or the African Institute for Minimising Sleep, as the students I met liked to call it when they were overwhelmed by assignments.
It is was the second time yesterday in a one week time and the fourth in a one month time that I came across Ramsey numbers. In the beginning I thought it was just a coincidence.
On October 6th 2020 Sir Roger Penrose was awarded, jointly with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, the nobel prize for physics for their groundbreaking discoveries concerning black holes.
I did a thought experiment: what would have happened to the world if corona would have hit us in 1990? Or in 2000? So my thoughts went back to my early years as an academic, wondering how we would have coped with the pandemic a few decades ago.
