[peapicker]

I was an undergrad CS intern (and Chaos enthusiast) assisting the physicists at Los Alamos Natl. Labs Center for Nonlinear Studies when he visited to give the monthly “Tea Talk” on some subject in nonlinear mathematics/ chaos theory back in ‘88. I didn’t understand most of what he said. I asked the Deputy Director, a long-time PhD Theoretical Physicist, about the gist of the talk afterwards. He said “I didn’t understand most of what he said. Maybe if I had been collaborating with him for a few months...”

Feigenbaum was a fascinating man and some of his writing is what made me want to get an internship at the Center. I never dreamed I meet the man over tea.

A great man.

[gwf]

I was there as well, also as an intern. Around the same time, Mandelbrot also stopped by CNLS to give a talk. CNLS in the late 80s was truly a magical place.

[peapicker]

It was pretty amazing. I recall Doyne Farmer was there too - he had this crazy custom coprocessor card for his cellular automata explorations. I got to write some stuff to run on a CRAY Y-MP. Got to to play with NeXT black box serial no. 36. (LANL had the first 50 I think). Lots of crazy cool people and tech!

[ovi256]

I'm amazed by the observation that even the Deputy Director, a seasoned theoretician, did not expect to understand a peer researcher's work without several months of collaboration. What chance does a mere undergrad or practitioner stand ! :)

[pas]

Basically the same :)

Usually, after a certain level math problems become very narrow, and a small subfield develops around them. They are "easy" to get into, to catch up, read the important papers, sketch out the proofs for yourself, get a feel for the concepts and for the conjectures that lurk among them.

And usually that's it. Usually a few folks of that very particular topic/field have some ideas that they are working on, usually for at least a year, they try to formalize them, conceptualize them, communicate them, and naturally to prove them.

And sometimes draft/working papers are all we get. Sometimes someone becomes a "household" name after many persistent years like Wiles.