flâneur

Nibbling on the Infinite Cheese of Knowledge – Bhāvanā

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Attracted to mathematics by virtue of it being the “philosophy of electronics’’ as Mazur recalls, he was admitted to a PhD program in mathematics at Princeton University despite not having any prerequisite degree requirements for the same. From his initial contributions to the area of geometric topology, Mazur moved onto algebraic geometry and then onto number theory where his unique perspective yielded profound results that were the cornerstones in Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem. As a mathematics professor who has also taught philosophy courses at Harvard, Mazur’s view of the subject is broad and unfettered and stresses on the importance of imagination even in a field as rigorous as mathematics. In his own words “When it comes to mathematical inspiration, the imagination could be considered the ghost in the rational machine of proof-making.’’1 One has to only read Mazur’s book Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) to recognize that he is equa

© IHES T he American mathematician Barry Charles Mazur is among the pantheon of greats who has transitioned between seemingly disparate areas of mathematics with deceptive ease, while at the same time leaving an indelible mark in each one of these. As the citation of the Chern medal which Mazur received in 2022 reads, "His numerous fundamental contributions place him squarely within the ranks of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century’’. Attracted to mathematics by virtue of it being the "philosophy of electronics’’ as Mazur recalls, he was admitted to a PhD program in mathematics

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