Saturday, April 18, 2020
One thing I've noticed over the years, as Georgia Tech math has transitioned from being a low-to-middle-rank to middle-to-high-rank department is that the environment is a lot more similar to what the writer of this book:
Link to a New Yorker blurb
describes Cambridge University as being like.
QUOTE: "I didn't fully realize what I had learnt about conversation until I came to live and work in Cambridge. There were two dominant models of talking there, both different from that of conversation as performance. There was politeness: what do you study and what college do you study it at, how was your day, what did you read? And usually that was the prelude to the use of the second model, exchange of information: I'll tell you about peasant farming in Mongolia, if you tell me about the novel in nineteenth-century France. The art of conversation was not practiced at all widely. At a dinner party, when the politeness ran out and if people felt that the occasion required them to refrain from exchanging information, that is, from talking about work, we played charades. We never played charades in Glasgow.
The problem with the academic intelligence that I was surrounded with in Cambridge was that it was too tidy. It reacted against insincerity, hyperbole, provocation and wordplay, which are all essential to the art of conversation. If the aim is to establish truth, then of course all of these elements must be disciplined. They threaten the project. But attaining truth is not the aim of most conversations.
Cambridge was also a highly competitive environment. It was hence always better to stay silent or speak reservedly, it was rarely advisable to begin talking about non-serious topics and it was never advisable to take the weaker position for the sake of doing something entertaining with it, or merely keep the conversation going."
When I first arrived at Georgia Tech back in 2003, the math department was scrappier and funner. One could go to the Einstein's Bagels shop in the student center (now gone), and catch Bill Green and others seated around a large table, recounting their travels through Europe, or some eccentric mathematician they knew once, or some book they'd read, and so on. Nowadays, a conversation like that would cause people to tune it out, and politely leave to catch up with someone they can ask an emergency question that begins with, "I had a few questions about the paper you presented in the seminar... Suppose G is a topological group... etc."
One occasinally hears the phrase "serious guy" -- "Is he a serious guy?"; "Such and so is a really serious guy." The phrase strikes me as a bit comical, given that most math isn't going to have much impact on the world, except generate more math. Life is short, just a few years from birth to death, and none of that "serious work" will be remembered for long. In time, all traces of our ever having existed will be erased.
The department does make an effort to make it more "friendly", by hosting "coffee hour" and other small gatherings. But it isn't ideal, and there are so many barriers to it succeeding. One barrier is that most of the people are "serious guys (and girls)", and keep each other at a distance -- unless, of course, they want to talk math, in which case there is always time. They might tell a quick, amusing anecdote that draws a few smiles; but it's not the kind of conversation that invites getting to know the person.
One manifestation of this whole environment is that one never, ever sees political emails passed around. Politics is personal; and, besides, serious guys don't talk about things they don't fully understand in depth, lest it sound like bullshitting. I think there might have been a few political emails, though, back before about 2006; and even today one might hear vague references to "our President (Trump)" when discussing NSF funding, say; but for the most part, people just don't talk about it -- they've got too much math to think about, something they can understand.
I don't get the impression this is the way it is in all the other departments. Parts of computer science, for example, have a more playful, human side. But, for the most part, I think that any sufficiently advanced academic department is indistinguishable from another -- if you want deep, personal connections, look for them outside the department.