So what happened?

Mathematicians tend to get huffy when you suggest to them that mathematical truths represent a sort of second class reality. When T D Lee was working on non-Abelian gauge theory he came across a mathematics called fiber-bundle theory. And the two theories were the same. So he went to his mathematics friends and asked them to explain this but they didnt see what needed explaining. But Lee said that while the gauge theory was a physical theory and therefore real the fiber-bundle theory was not a physical theory and therefore not real. And they got upset and they said no no no it is real. Topology is able to describe with some precision forms that belie physical exemplification. Yet they cant be ideations because then you have to ask ideations of what? Anyway, by the end of the summer I had more or less dug myself into a hole.

All right. So what happened?

Three wise men came from the East.

I’m sorry?

I got a fellowship to IHES and there I met three men that I could talk to.

This is the Institute in France.

Yes.

Who were the men?

Grothendieck, Deligne, and Oscar Zariski.

Why them?

Because it was them, because it was me.

That sounds like a quote.

It is. Montaigne.

Your faculty advisor. Did she consider you…Not sure about the word. Somewhat grandiose?

I suppose. Of course she wasnt offered a fellowship at IHES.

This was quite prestigious I take it.

Yes.

You had never met Grothendieck.

No. I wrote him a letter and he said to send him a paper and I did.

What was the paper about?

It was an explication of topos theory that I thought he probably hadnt considered. And he hadnt. What I didnt know was that he was already leaving mathematics. I didnt have much time.

Are you all right?

I’m all right.

Do you want to come back to this?

I’m all right.

We can talk about something else. What is it that we’ve more or less passed over?

The fact that I’m female.

As regards mathematics? Or the souldoctors.

Either one.

The doctors then.

Women enjoy a different history of madness. From witchcraft to hysteria we’re just bad news. We know that women were condemned as witches because they were mentally unstable but no one has considered the numbers—even few as they might be—of women who were stoned to death for being bright. That I havent wound up chained to a cellar wall or burned at the stake is not a testament to our ascending civility but to our ascending skepticism. If we still believed in witches we’d still be burning them. Hooknosed crones strapped into the electric chair. No one has ever seemed to comment that the stereotypical witch is meant to appear Jewish. I guess the skepticism is okay. If you can stomach what goes with it. I’m happy to be treated well but I know that it’s an uncertain business. When this world which reason has created is carried off at last it will take reason with it. And it will be a long time coming back. What happened to our turns?