Sunday, July 30, 2017

Giving advice

Cutting down on smoking seems to help. Today I worked for about four hours in the garden. Weeding, edging and planting some new plants. Also walked for half an hour in the morning and twenty minutes in the evenening. Old men tend to advise. Since I never listened to the advice of others, I won't advise. I just tell my experiences. M.S.Narasimhan told me a story about my listening to advice. During my reasearch student days, I did not want to be guided and also the area I wanted there was nobody working. My Tamil Brahmin friends tried hard to help me by learning some of the topics. But I went my own way and after finishing enough work for a ph.d. I registered with M.S. Narasimhan. He was like an elder brother and used to take me for beer drinking on Saturdays. Once he found a fellowship to U.K. was available and suggested that I apply for it. I was called for an interview. Since MSN knew that I was not diplomatic, he advised me how to behave an interview. I do not remember all this but this was what he told me four years ago. Anyway, in the interview, somebody asked me what were the two greatest theorems in topology. I said it was silly question. Apparently I came back and told MSN that I followed his advice and did not say that it was a stupid question. I did get the fellowship though

2 comments:

Unknown said...

While maybe not the greatest theorems but what about your favourite theorems? What do you think of Thurston's beautiful theorems such as on the homeomorphism of surfaces or on 3-manifolds that fibre over the circle?

gaddeswarup said...

I have retired in 2005 and work now off and on . it is a very specialised opic and my overall perspective is now very limited. As to favourite topics it is still Galois Theory.