In article FAWCETT.93Oct21162024@lethe.nynexst.com, fawcett@nynexst.com (Tom Fawcett) writes: |> |> "I saw your talk. You're a mathematician, aren't you?" |> |> "Ummm, well... yes I am." |> |> "I hope you use clean needles." |>It is time, once and for all, to end the myth that one needs to be a drug user in order to be a sucessful mathematician. Yes, Erdos is a world class speed freak. Yes, Wiles is rumored to have a heroin habit. Yes, Michael Friedman got tenure at UCSD partly because of his research on four-manifolds and partly because of his ability to score coke for the rest of the faculty.
But this does not contradict the fact that the vast, vast majority of working creative mathematicians do not use controlled substances on a daily basis. A good example would be Alexander Grothendieck, perhaps the greatest living mathematician, who aside from the occasional shots of NyQuil has been drug free since 1977.
Now, I know that the peer pressure to enhance one's mathematical ability through drugs can be enormous, especially for the young up and coming grad student or post-doc. Don't cave in! If only mass quantities of alcohol was good enough for Gauss, it should be good enough for you. You may not be able to visualize that 24 dimensional Grassmanian variety right away without designer XTC, but when you do, god damn it, you will have done it the old fashion way.
This serious issue is only recently being openly talked about by the mathematical community. There has been a running thread on the Young Mathematicians newsletter on the subject, and I hear Notices of the AMS is going to print something about it in December. Regretably, though, the issue is being framed not in terms of the social pressure to use drugs, but rather over whether the latest regulations allow you to charge amphetamines taken for research purposes to NSF grants.
-Thomas C now, operating systems on the other hand ... I wouldn't touch BSD without at least a pan of grass brownies.