The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [102]
Still, Myra and Ranjit admitted to each other, in their nightly wrapped-in-each-other’s-arms dialogues, most events seemed to be going at least a little better, or at least a little less badly, than before Silent Thunder had deposed a regime. Most things, that is. Not necessarily including Ranjit’s academic career.
The trouble with Ranjit’s academic career was that he couldn’t seem to get it started. After the dismal response to his first seminar, he was determined not to suffer a similar fate for his second attempt.
But what should it be? After much thought, he decided this one would be a recapitulation, step by step, of the long story of his involvement, and ultimate success, with Fermat’s legacy. Dr. Davoodbhoy agreed to schedule it, remarking temperately that it was at least worth a try.
The students, however, didn’t agree. Apparently, word had gotten around of his poor teaching skills, and although a few did sign up, a considerably larger number asked questions about it, temporized, and finally gave it a pass. Most seemed to think that Ranjit had already pretty well covered that ground, in speeches and interviews, anyway. The seminar was canceled.
Ranjit considered the research option. There were, to start, the famous seven unsolved problems proposed by the Clay Mathematics Institute at the dawn of the twenty-first century—not only interesting problems in themselves but, through the generosity of the institute, each one coming with a million-dollar reward for a solution.
So Ranjit accessed the list and thoughtfully pondered it. Some were pretty abstruse, even for him. Still, there was the Hodge conjecture and the Poincaré, the Riemann hypothesis—no, no, at least some of them had been solved and the prize collected. And, of course, the biggest of all: P = NP.
No matter how much Ranjit pondered over them, they remained remote. He could not work up the feeling that had gripped him the first time he’d seen what Fermat had scribbled in his margin. Myra offered one theory: “Maybe you just aren’t fourteen anymore.”
But that wasn’t it. Fermat’s proof had been an entirely different matter. It hadn’t ever been presented to him as a problem that he should try to solve. One of the greatest minds in the history of mathematics had boasted that he had a proof for that final theorem. All Ranjit had to do was figure it out.
He tried to explain to Myra. “Did you ever hear of a man named George Dantzig? He was a graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1939. He came late to a class and saw two equations that the professor had written on the blackboard. Dantzig thought they were a homework assignment, so he copied them down and took them home and solved them.
“Only,” he told her, “they weren’t homework. The professor had put them up there as two problems in statistical mathematics that no one had been able to solve.”
Myra pursed her lips. “So what you’re saying,” she said, “is if Dantzig had known that, he might not have been able to solve them. Is that right?”
Ranjit shrugged. “Maybe.”
Myra availed herself of her husband’s favorite reply to puzzling remarks. “Huh,” she said.
Which made him grin. “Good,” he said. “So now let’s give Tashy a swimming lesson.”
No one who knew little Natasha de Soyza Subramanian thought for one instant that she was not an exceptionally bright child. Toilet trained at under a year, first steps a month later, first clearly