Math Was Never the Same Again

Sandro Contenta provides this Sunday reflection from a profile of Canada’s Robert Langlands:

“In 1966, [Robert] Langlands almost abandoned mathematics. Deep mysteries in number theory discouraged him. He decided on a change of scenery and applied for a job in Turkey.

‘The decision itself freed me and I began to amuse myself with mathematics without any grand hopes or serious intentions,’ he said in written answers to a 2010 UBC interview.

Inspiration struck during the Christmas break, in an empty, grand old building on the Princeton campus, as Langlands gazed at a garden through leaded windows.

He described his revelation in a Jan. 16, 1967 letter to Andre Weil, a giant in the field of number theory: ‘If you are willing to read as pure speculation,’ he wrote Weil, I would appreciate that; if not — I am sure you have a waste basket handy.’

"Three years later, after he’d returned from Turkey, Langlands published his two theories, called functoriality and reciprocity, under the title ‘Problems in the Theory of Automorphic Forms.’ Math would never be the same again.”