No. 86 of 108
September 7, 2025
“The world’s greatest mathematician avoided politics. Then Trump cut science funding. Terence Tao, often called the “Mozart of Math,” is focused on fundraising after federal research funding to UCLA was suspended.”—headline for an interview in the Washington Post. “Math is, to me, is about making connections between things you didn’t know were connected… The U.S. has always had a strong scientific reputation, at least in my lifetime. It’s just the sheer scale of activity and just the general support for science, until recently very bipartisan — an understanding that science brings prosperity, it helps national security. And it’s just a public good. There’s a very positive culture here. People are really sort of ambitious and big thinking and collaborative, and they want to build something that lasts.”
How did we create so much distance between our daily existence and all the people and things which make it possible? Not connect the food we eat with among the hardest working class peoples who pick and process and deliver? Not understand that the devices we covet, technological fruits we enjoy, and medical miracles depend on endless pursuit of scientific inquiry? Not realize the health and very life of the children in our lives are dependent on the health of all of the children within at least a day’s travel’s distance which is dependent on a thing called herd immunity which is not best achieved by all of the children becoming life-threatening-ly ill? Could go on here with all of the mis-fired connectivity in this chaotic moment, which would appear as a word problem achieving ∞. Embracing Tao’s definition of math making connections between things we didn’t know were connected… we need more math!