My Research

While Tom has been preparing for this trip to Cambridge tying up ends here, getting technical papers ready and making sure we have lodging there, I've been doing my own research.  The library's catalog listed the usual travel books but it also mentioned a novel about Cambridge, The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.  It came with high praise--it's a New York Times notable book, a Pen/Faulkner award finalist, etc.  The subject matter was intriguing too--the story of a self taught and incredibly gifted Indian mathematician, Ramanujan, who corresponded with and eventually traveled to Cambridge to see the already famous British mathematician, G. H. Hardy.  Now a book about mathematicians, especially those who are engaged in the esoteric study of number theory, hardly sounds like a page turner but that indeed has been the case.  Give credit to the author for making these quirky guys and British society at the beginning of World War I be totally absorbing reading.