Math in the Time of Plague
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Math in the Time of Plague BARRY MAZUR
The Viewpoint column offers readers of the Mathematical Intelligencer the opportunity to write about any issue of interest to the international mathematical community. Disagreement and controversy are welcome. The views and opinions expressed here, however, are exclusively those of the author. The publisher and editors-in-chief do not endorse them or accept responsibility for them. Articles for Viewpoint should be submitted to the editors-inchief.
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n times like the present—with microscopic hedgehogs of coronavirus short-circuiting our world like a swarm of locusts (Figure 1); disintegrating our communities; threatening our families; casting a shadow on the present for our elders, on the future for our youth; immobilizing our economy; and poised to challenge the springs and gears of our democracy—our thoughts have certainly changed in mood, if not in substance. Today’s (July 26, 2020) announced unemployment rate is a number I hesitate to write. It is proof enough that some of the less fortunate in our society are bearing the greater burden. One wonders whether this is a given in every plague; how many low-paid Egyptian laborers were collateral damage in the tenfold volley of altercation between God and Pharaoh? To defy all this, we should be looking out for what we can do for the good of others, but also, we could be looking in, for some mode of consolation. Why don’t we look about for gems of constancy—in our thoughts, expectations, in our ways of understanding the world—and rejoice in them—even the tiniest of them—as sparkles affirming the robustness of our souls? Our daily missions have changed drastically: healers are at the front lines, as are those who provide equipment for them, as are many in the applied sciences—all of these now feeling the urgent responsibility, and hence the strain, to produce, and to produce rapidly, helpful things to deal with this crisis. Parents (and grandparents) have become homeschool teachers. Being bound in the nutshell of one’s own house and yet exploring, in companionship with a first-grader, a world of Mesozoic pterosaurs (a world entirely unknown to me until a week ago) is thrilling, even though any metaphoric connection to the equally unknown future of this world had best be kept at bay. Our ways of coming together have been transformed: The theaters, of course, are shut down. As for performances, well, there are fixed stage-blocking readings of Shakespeare’s plays, the actors in Zoom gallery view, such as Two Gentlemen of Verona with the byline ‘‘The Show .’’ This follows good tradition, in that Must Go Shakespeare himself seemed to adapt well to the quarantine of plague after plague.1 Thankfully, there still is, there always is, music: the food—yes, of love—but also, perhaps now, of comfort— perhaps of nostalgia. There are Yo-Yo Ma’s wonderful Songs of Comfort amid global crisis, and Neapolitan neighborhoods singing in harmony, yet separated by their balconies. Or a performance of the serenade ‘‘Nessun
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In life, and in metaphor;
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