This evening I went to Willem Visser’s inaugral professorial speech. In fact, there were two inaugrals: Ingrid Rewitzky was first, and she was followed by Willem. I found both presentations interesting. Perhaps I was more intrigued Ingrid’s more because I had already proofread Willem’s official lecture and had seen most of the slides beforehand. Everybody else seemed to enjoy Willem’s very much and it was definitely very accessible to the wide range of audience members. I don’t think I would have done it any differently (assuming for the moment that I had to make such a speech), but if I had to deliver Ingrid’s, I would have taken a radically alternative approach.

Her work (about duality in category theory) is, in some sense, irrelevant, because it is simply impossible to convey the true extent of work to a general audience. It is arguably closer to Theoretical Computer Science than Mathematics. It is even quite challenge to convey it to other mathematicians. On the other hand, there is a lot more scope for philosophizing about the relationship between Mathematics and real life, and about the nature of Mathematics itself. One nice feature was a loose strand running through the work that touched on the history of mathematics, which is probably what I would have emphasized much more. Sorry to get technical, but the notion of mathematical structure begins with Euclid and then flows through to Cantor, Poincaré, Hilbert, Hausdorff, Kuratowski, etc. This would probably not be too interesting for those not keen on the history of mathematics, but for those of us who enjoy the writing of Eric Temple Bell…  I think I’ll promote my copy of “History of Mathematics” to bedside reading. Despite his weaknesses, the books are still inspiring.

Anyhow, I’m off to bed now because I teach tomorrow at 8:00.