Connections

Can I be bothered to type all that again... It really isn't acceptable when you are paying for membership of a site for it to lose your homework because it decides that it is 'over capacity'... I'm really annoyed by that.

The short version is...that this is a picture of a French mathematician called Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, who is President of the European Research Council. He was giving a lecture at the Royal Society of Edinburgh this evening, and he was paying tribute - here - to Michael Atiyah, also a mathematician. Michael is a member of the advisory board of the institute that I direct - and a remarkable man. He remembers going to work at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies as if it were yesterday - it was 1955. He got to know the increasingly eccentric Kurt Gödel at Princeton, and in turn Gödel had been very friendly with, and collaborated with, Albert Einstein, who also worked at the IAS in Princeton. The intellectual connections give you shivers down your spine... If I make it to 85, I'd like to be like Michael Atiyah...amazingly sharp, and so genial with it.

I had dinner with Bourguignon, Atiyah and a bunch of other mathematicians yesterday evening. It was - for me - a bit like being back at University, as I went to a Cambridge college which is famous for its mathematicians (and of which Michael Atiyah was once Master, although not when I was there). In comparison, today's dinner - with a visiting American professor who is an expert in federal jurisdiction - seemed a little bland, although it was perfectly engaging and interesting. And he was very impressed with the Vintage, so that was great.

Right, I'm copying that text before I risk 'publishing'. Grrrrhhh. Bloody blipfoto