Jury-Law books

Years later, as Chess
slowly came to accept the professional rank of a
good-but-not-great mathematician, he had Stallman's
sophomore-year proof to look back on as a taunting
early indicator.
"That's the thing about mathematics," says Chess. "You
don't have to be a first-rank mathematician to
recognize first-rate mathematical talent. I could tell
I was up there, but I could also tell I wasn't at the
first rank. If Richard had chosen to be a
mathematician, he would have been a first-rank mathematician."
For Stallman, success in the classroom was balanced by
the same lack of success in the social arena. Even as
other members of the math mafia gathered to take on the
Math 55 problem sets, Stallman preferred to work alone.
The same went for living arrangements. On the housing
application for Harvard, Stallman clearly spelled out
his preferences. "I said I preferred an invisible,
inaudible, intangible roommate," he says. In a rare
stroke of bureaucratic foresight, Harvard's housing
office accepted the request, giving Stallman a one-room
single for his freshman year.


Pages:
75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99