Ted Brown

I have been involved with mathematics and physics since my early days at school, without any diminution of interest or fascination. Quite the opposite, as I get older the fascination gets greater. Who could not be impressed and astounded by Srinivas Ramanujan, or Sophia Germain for example, how mathematical formulae seem to pop up out of the blue, without their intervention, without their being able to explain how it arose, in many cases. But perhaps Leonard Euler is the most impressive, publishing a mathematical paper at the rate of one a week, all from memory because of his blindness, His equation, exp[iπ] = -1, is almost unbelievable. The exponential function, exp[], is an irrational number, pie "π" is a non-terminating number, and "i" is a complex number, sometimes referred to as an imaginary number, and yet when all 3 are combined we get an ordinary simple number! How could I not be consumed by mathematics! How could I not want other people to experience the same sense of awe!