Zachary Porat

On Meeting Your Idols

Posted on July 27, 2024

If I had to hazard a guess, I would wager that whoever said “Never meet your idols” was not a mathematician. In my previous blog post, I wrote about meeting Barry Mazur for the first time. Despite Professor Mazur being a titan of mathematics, he was warm and kind throughout our interaction. His sincerity shone through; we were just two people chatting about math and more.

I first came to this realization—that my mathematical heroes were to be met, not ignored—when Joe Silverman visited Wesleyan a few years ago. He came to give a colloquium talk on a subject that I do not remember. What I do remember, however, is our jovial conversation as we watched some of my colleagues compete in a game of duck chess. Here was a renowned number theorist, who wrote two texts that greatly influenced my interest in the subject (Rational Points on Elliptic Curves and The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves), talking chess theory as we drank coffee and ate cookies.

Professor Silverman’s visit was an eye-opening encounter for me. I realized that these mathematicians I revered were wonderful people as well. I am happy to report that since then, I have experienced several similarly genuine interactions with mathematical greats (including Professor Mazur)!

My most recent mathematical adventure took me to MIT, along the beautiful Charles River in Cambridge, MA, for ANTS XVI. Here is an artsy photograph I took just outside the main conference hall.

The conference attendee list was a who’s who of famous computational number theorists, including Joe Silverman, Steven Galbraith, Andrew Sutherland, John Cremona, and Bjorn Poonen (some of you might be familiar with Professor Poonen for another reason…)

Once again, I was reminded just how lovely our community is. Everyone I talked to was curious about my work and what the future has in store. So let me offer a piece of advice: “Meet your math idols.” I haven’t been disappointed yet!

P.S. If you weren’t sold on Joe Silverman’s celebrity, we witnessed an attendee ask Professor Silverman to sign a copy of Advanced Topics in the Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves. (I think this was the book being signed, but I can’t be sure; Freddy and I made this speculation based on the thickness of the book.) He, of course, obliged.