One of the first concerts I ever went to was Laurie Anderson.

https://www.tiktok.com/@zuksone/video/7270232378986007850

You kids know who she is? You should check her out. If there are folks making that avant-garde / pop crossover these days, share some. It used to be not so unusual — David Bowie was that way — but now, not so much. Oh, and David Byrne. Saw him in a very small hall in Ithaca. It was his birthday and the band interrupted the show to sing Happy Birthday to him and say that he was too shy to admit his birthday to the audience. Ha!

Another first few concerts was Philip Glass. He sorta counts, too. I even talked with him a bit after he finished, there were so few people there.

He was a brilliant kid, and like so many who have achievements in music, studied mathematics too — and philosophy, starting at age 15 at U Chicago. And wrote an opera about Einstein, so you can see how I thought he was groovy. Groovy. Groovy.

Around that time I saw on Broadway the character of Alan Turing brought to life by Derek Jacobi. I wanted to talk with him too 🤣 Wrote him a letter but he didn’t answer.

This was the same time as I crossed paths with John Nash a few times. He wasn’t well known yet then, and no one young knew who he was and no one old was around to tell us, but fortunately he got a Nobel prize and then everyone knew. Besides music, alas, another common thread for many truly brilliant in math and physics is sometimes mental illness. I don’t know if that’s actually a “thing”, or maybe more likely it’s just that if you’re cosseted into an upper middle class life you don’t encounter many adults with active schizophrenia or other difficult ways of being, it sadly being hard for them to sustain in that world — except in academia, which while maligned lately is truly a wonderful world that welcomes all comers and finds a way to let you be the best you are able and not worry too much about the rest.

I saw John Conway showing puzzles to the Greek owner of the Athenian restaurant — I always like to talk with the Greek diner owners, who played a crucial role in my family history — and he refused to believe me when I said that guy who you just lost a puzzle challenge to is a brilliant mathematician.

“This guy, who wears shorts and sandals in the winter? He is crazy! He’s homeless, isn’t he? He shows me puzzles and I let him eat for free. You’re trying to fool me! How can someone be a famous professor of puzzles?! The guy never has any money!”

Jason Morgan invented, discovered?, the theory of plate tectonics in 1967. I crashed a faculty reception for the free shrimp cocktail and he was standing there alone and I went up to him all excited and said oh wow it’s you, sorry to bother you. And he asked me who I thought he was and I told him and he said ‘wow no one has ever recognized me that way before’.

I couldn’t believe he didn’t have groupies. I told him I knew who he was because I read people talking about him as a candidate for the Nobel prize. I don’t recall but I imagine now that I mentioned my interdisciplinary interests and said he reminded me of Alvarez, who had also crossed over from physics and with his dad figured out what happened to the dinosaurs.

Morgan died not so long ago. I hope finally was pretty widely known!

Not long after that I nervously approached Wheeler after a talk, asking him to recommend a faculty member to advise and mentor me and he said to come by his office to confer and then after a few minutes I realized he had volunteered for the job. I suppose in my enthusiasm I had dragooned him into it 🙂 But he never made it seem that way.

I am 80% sure that when I was a high school student visiting the campus, and some student hosting me heard about my interests and said you gotta meet this guy and dragged me to a dorm room, the “guy” was Jeff Bezos. I remember an odd and open laugh, and a youthful demeanour on a delightful guy who seemed a bit older because he was losing his hair. I don’t recall if he said he wanted to be the richest person in the world. He did say he had wanted to do physics but it kicked his ass and he switched to computers. I wasn’t smart enough to make that move.

I don’t know if I really understood how special a place Princeton was. I mean, I did know. But even knowing, I didn’t realize how much it made so easily available to me and so many others.

I hope it’s still that way for young people.