Queer Idea

The characteristic of mathematical work is elegance,
by which we mean economy.
You determine what's true, then
you say it once, succinctly,
and move on.

For instance, Ken preskenis and I
put eleven years into C[z,f],
and then we wrote
a six-page paper.

You work on the assumption that your readers are
bright, prepared to work, and patient.

If you can't determine the truth of the matter,
you keep quiet.
After a year or two, you probably hate the problem,
but you don't give up.
It is merely amusing when someone comes along
and implies that words alone can make
a problem go away.
The editors of Inventiones Mathematicae
would, rightly, give short shrift
to the suggestion that proving Fermat's Last Theorem
is, after all, less important, than
stating the problem in less jaded language.

This trick of stepping over problems
smacks of Alexander of Macedon,
by common consent a distressing young man.
When he ran out of strangers to pick on,
he picked on his friends.
But at least his response to the Gordian Knot
was better than the cop-out:

This knot's not unknottable,
but who wants to rule the world?