Honors Convocation Keynote Address as Delivered by Surender K. Jain
NOTE: Following is the text of the keynote address delivered by Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Surender K. Jain on September 23 at the 2000 Honors Convocation. For more information about the convocation, please see the related news release.
President Glidden, Provost Brehm, Vice-presidents, Deans, Trustees, Donors, Distinguished Professors, Students and their Parents, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor for me to have been asked to give the address at this year's Honors Convocation. I am especially delighted to do so because I have been associated with so many highly gifted students for more than 30 years. This is an experience that I have greatly relished. The fellowship and interaction with bright and creative young minds is the richest reward that our profession offers.
Today's convocation is meant to honor the recipients of scholarships, and to express our gratitude to donors who have been making generous contributions toward the enrichment of our academic programs. I am happy to participate in this important event.
Both my children studied at Ohio University and were recipients of scholarships. My daughter Nisha did Honors in mathematics and computer science. After completing the honors course in three years and graduating in 1986, she went to Ohio State University for graduate work in computer science. She is now working as a software engineer with a consulting company. My son Steve was an Honors student in chemistry. After graduating in 1996, he entered the medical school at the Case Western Reserve University. He is going to complete his M.D. shortly. Incidentally, while doing his Honors in chemistry, he was awarded a scholarship for working on a project with Dr. Robert DeMott, Distinguished Professor of English. He became so fascinated by the subject that he decided to defer his admission to the medical school for a year in order to pursue further study in English literature. Those of you among the audience who are parents can well understand my feeling of pride and satisfaction on this account. To see one's children do well in life is the most joyous reward of being a parent.
Well, one of the important features of our undergraduate education at Ohio University is the existence of Honors Tutorial College. This college, in its present form, came into existence in 1972. The Honors tutorial program of Ohio University enjoys a unique status of eminence in the educational landscape of the United States. The tutorial program here is modeled on the pattern of the tutorial system in British universities like Oxford and Cambridge. The governing principle behind the Honors tutorial system here is to provide an environment in which the exceptionally gifted students can blossom.
Such students are to be given expert guidance, but not subjected to the usual rules regarding course requirements, other than those pertaining to their special field of interest. For most students study-plans and standard requirements are no doubt necessary and useful. Without them they could feel lost. But for the exceptionally gifted, the strict requirements are a hindrance to their progress. Their creative mind withers under the heavy weight of rules and loses its spark of creativity.
You, the recipients of scholarships are the pride of Ohio University. You represent the intellectual cream of the University. Or, as the French would put it, you are "la crème de la crème."
Many of our students in the past have gone to Graduate school and have earned laurels for themselves. I am sure that all of you will have a brilliant career in whatever profession or walk of life you choose to enter. I do hope, however, that some of you will take up teaching and research. Although the monetary rewards in the teaching profession are meager compared to those in business and industry, the intellectual rewards more than compensate for it
You are now at the threshold of the most creative period of your life. Some of the major breakthroughs in mathematics and sciences were made by young persons in their twenties. For example, the French mathematician E. Galois published his first paper at the age of seventeen. The results obtained by him laid the foundation for the development of modern abstract algebra. The Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel made his greatest contribution at the age of nineteen. His work has profoundly influenced the development of number theory and analysis. The Indian mathematician Srinivas Ramanujan was elected to the Royal Society of England at the age of 31, for his monumental work in number theory done in his early youth. Einstein was in his twenties when he discovered the theory of relativity. So was Bill Gates when he dropped out of Harvard School and ... well you know the rest. I suppose you have heard of the famous, or notorious, Fermat's Last Theorem. After having remained unproven for 360 years, it was eventually proved just a few years ago by Professor Andrew Wiles of Princeton University. Although Wiles was forty years old when he completed his proof, he had started working on it when he was in his early twenties.
Incidentally, the Clay Mathematics Institute recently announced a list of seven unsolved mathematical problems, and offered a prize of one million dollars for each problem to any one who can find a solution. Some of those problems are of more than hundred years standing. I do hope that some of the budding mathematicians present here will take up the challenge in working on some of those questions. I know there are much easier ways of earning a million dollars these days. You could make a cool million bucks by simply answering some trivial questions on a TV show.But I can assure you that the intellectual joy you will get from solving these problems, or even trying to solve them, will be everlasting.
Many people find it hard to believe that there can be problems that the best mathematicians of the world are not able to solve even after struggling with them for hundreds of years. One day, a professor told his Math 101 class about some of the long standing unsolved problems in mathematics. At the end of the lecture, a student in the back row asked, "How come there are no solutions to these problems? Aren't solutions to all the problems given at the back of the book?" Well, I guess the seven problems announced by the Clay Institute are not among the odd-numbered problems having solutions at the back of the book. I suppose every area of human knowledge has its own problems that are not "odd-numbered". Human kind awaits the solution to important problems such as the cure for cancer or AIDS. The solutions are not on the back pages of any book.
Only talented young people like you are our hope for finding the solutions. Looking at the bright faces in front of me, I feel confident that the solutions will come out one day.
In the end, let me felicitate all the recipients of scholarships and other awards. I wish all of you a long life of creative intellectual activity and much happiness.
Thank you.
