@thejonullman
How did I end up a Mathematician?View quoted post on X
(long story)
As a child, my dad said to me "our family isn't good in math" and I, preferring soccer and dating to anything involving brain work, accepted this as truth.
As an undergrad I studied Biology and CS, to go into Neuroscience (I ended up marrying the daughter of one of my esteemed professors. But that's a different story).
I realized I really liked the math courses, and hated anything applied - be it programming or biology labs. In fact, every semester opening I went to the Dean of undergrad at the time (Prof. @noamnisan, now an advisor to StarkWare) to negotiate replacing programming courses with more math (which is why I don't know programming till this day; even though Intro to C++ was the first course I taught as an Assistant Professor. But that, too, is a different story.)
Then, as a graduate student, I wanted to go into Machine Learning, but the coveted Professor (Tali Tishby, RIP), had already a gazzilion students.
I was sitting in a course on Computational Complexity taught by a Postdoc, when he was replaced for one lecture by one Avi Wigderson. I knew nothing about him at the time (his picture did appear on posters, as he just received the Nevanlinna Prize, but as a dumb young graduate student I didn't know what that means).
Avi spoke about how some folks are now trying to formally prove that it's impossible to settle the P vs. NP conjecture. And I was mesmerized by this. So I told him: I want to study this as my MSc. project.
A period of courting started. Avi wasn't sure I'm a good fit for him (my math grades were ok, but I never was the straight-A student type). So, he dropped a book about Proof Complexity on me, saying: Read and summarize it to me.
I read that book like 3 times cover to cover and didn't understand a word beyond the intro chapter (today I know that's more likely the fault of the author, not my own stupidity. But that's another story).
A few weeks later, still not understanding a word on the subject matter, Avi asked to explain a recent paper on "degree and size of Polynomial Calculus proofs". We sat in his home, I explained.
At some point he asked: "Why can't this be applied to the Resolution proof system?" (Resolution is The most important and basic propositional calculus proof system). I squinted, thought a bit, and said "Oh, but it can, here's how", and applied the same proof method to Resolution.
Avi got very excited.
I said "let's send an email to the authors of the previous paper", thinking that if I understand this stuff, it can't really be more than email-worthy.
Avi insisted we write it up as a paper. Every few days I tried to convince him to drop it and just send an email, but he was adamant, and I listened.
Good thing I did. It ended up as my most cited and impotant paper prior to the STARK/SNARK ones.
After that paper, a few others came along. With each one, I was sure it's only an email-worthy observation, not Deep Math. I saw all these other papers, that were so hard to understand, and by comparison my own stuff was so clear and simple.
It took me many years to realize that this is how math progresses. You spend a lot of time internalizing some theoretical concepts, and then one day you "see it". And then it seems to you all clear and simple. But its clear and simple only to you. To others, its complicated.
Today, when I have to go and look back at some of my earlier papers, I find myself squinting, scratching my head, and saying "damn, that's some serious stuff, how did they come up with this?" :-)
After those initial math breakthroughs, Avi offered I do not do just an MSc but actually a PhD, which is how I ended up a theoretical computer scientist (which is a kind of mathematician).
THE END.
A reminder that part of the social contract R1 universities have with the public is that not only should we produce fantastic research output, but our world-class faculty should teach and teach well.View quoted post on X
