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One Hundred
Tamils of the 20th Century
Mamanithar Professor
C.Jeyaratnam Eliezer
Prof
C.J.Eliezer was honoured by the Federal
Government with the Order of Australia and,
in 1997 was awarded Tamil Eelam's highest
national honour of "Maamathithar" by the
Leader of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai
Pirabaharan.
"Reporter: Are
you an agent for the LTTE?
Prof. C.J.Eliezer:
Certainly not.
Reporter: How would you describe, then, your
relationship with the LTTE?
Prof.C.J.Eliezer: As an admirer, as an emotional admirer of
the LTTE.
Reporter: A
sympathizer?
Prof.C.J.Eliezer: Sympathiser, yes.
Reporter: Somebody who gives the LTTE
advice?
Prof.C.J.Eliezer: I have not given them any
advice.
Reporter: Somebody who provides the LTTE with
support when asked?
Prof.C.J.Eliezer: Well, they haven't asked me for anything,
but irrespective of that, they'll find my
pronouncements at meetings and things, they'll
find them useful.
Reporter: Useful
in terms of furthering their cause?
Prof.C.J.Eliezer:
Yes, because they're all
committed to the idea of liberation,
and as they are, I am, and we do it in different ways."
Interview with
SBS Television 4 October 2000,
Australia
With Universities and with
Mathematics - A Long Love Affair
Valedictory Address by Professor C.J.Eliezer
to Trobe University, Melbourne, December 1983
I have had a long innings as a University
Academic. It is just over 45 years ago when,
after completing an honours degree, I started
lecturing at the University in Colombo, under an
appointment similar to that of the present
tutorship at La Trobe but with more lecturing
duties.
Since then I have moved along a long road
which has taken me to several countries and
universities. I had an early fancy that every 5
years or so I should change my place of work and
every 20 years my profession. Things have not
quite worked out that way, but I have had in all
8 years in Cambridge, 13 in Ceylon, 9 in Malaysia
and nearly 16 at La Trobe - with sabbaticals in
Princeton Institute, University of Chicago and
Matscience in India. So in 4 continents, I have
worked with hundreds of colleagues, sat in
thousands of committees, worked on hundreds of
research problems; taught tens of thousands of
students, given tens of thousands of lectures,
marked hundreds of thousands of examination
scripts.
My family and I have lived, among and enjoyed
the friendships of people of various cultures,
different nationalities, many language groups,
and all major religious persuasions. We have
found it easy to do so because of our upbringing
where we learnt to repeat an ancient Thamil
couplet of 2nd century B.C. (Puranaruru ):
All the world is my homeland
All its people my kinsfolk.
Now reaching that age when formal professional
life terminates and one looks back and reflects,
two things about that professional life stand
out: One is that I have been lucky to have as a
abject one which is demanding and absorbing, one
with a long history and which has profoundly
influenced mankind and its ways, a subject which
continues to grow and bring new surprises, a
thing of beauty, elegance. intellectual
challenges and emotional satisfaction, and
occasionally, in those lucky moments, wild
emotional, thrill.
The second matter of luck for me was to work
in universities in various stages of development,
when much of the university world was expanding
into a world wide community which valued and
promoted a liberal education, and intellectual
activity and growth, in an atmosphere of academic
freedom where universities are not subject to
political control or made instruments for
particular power groups. At the same time
universities have been moving towards a
determination not to be isolated from the world
at large. I was lucky to work in Universities
when they were committed to the twin concepts of
Autonomous University and a Responsible
University.
Thus the two worlds - the Mathematical world
and the University world became early in life my
professional loyalties, which with the passing of
the years have mellowed into professional loves.
This is the background to the title of my
address.
I had occasion about a year ago to speak on
the Mathematical Sciences in Perspectives at the
inauguration of the Institute of Fundamental
Research in Sri Lanka (1982). I think that a
summary of what I said then would be useful as
introduction today.
School Mathematics
I am going to begin with some early history.
In this audience, there are many mathematicians.
I am going to suggest that every one here is or
was a mathematician. Some would immediately
disclaim that description. At school - one learnt
about numbers and arithmetic. Later one learnt
Geometry, with its theorems, construction and
proofs. All that was good mathematics. How much
lasting influence these had on each of us, we
cannot really tell, not without psychoanalysis
and study of the sub conscious . I would suggest
that those influences were great, despite what
our conscious memories may suggest.
Some say of their school mathematics that they
hated it. Bernard Shaw in his usual style had
some pungent words. When late in life Karl
Pearson convinced him of the use of statistics,
he exclaimed that he realised only then that at
school, instead of being taught mathematics, he
had been made a fool of - with those x's, y's
and other nonsense.
Early History
It is useful to recall the in the early
history of man both numbers and geometry were
integral parts of those processes which quickened
human activity and led on to the beginnings and
developments of what we call civilisation. That
is, the origins of mathematics are intermingled
with the origins of civilization. Certain
evidences of our past have been buried in the
debris of ancient cities or buried within ancient
languages. In recent times archaeologists and
linguists have combined to dig out information
and to make interpretations. The picture they
give is fascinating.
Human activity quickened at the end of the
last Ice Age. As temperatures began to rise,
there was more fruit in the trees, and more fish
in the streams. More food led to more population,
which then began to cluster together for safer
and better living, in villages than cities. The
first cities emerged 10,000 years ago. However,
the cities that came up about 5,000 - 6,000 years
ago, on the banks of some great rivers, showed
two new features: the invention of the wheel and
development of writing. In Sumeria, on the banks
of the Tigris and Euphrates, in Egypt on the
banks of the Nile, in India in the Indus Valley,
and in China near the Yangtze and Hwang-Ho,
cities developed and human evolution had reached
a new phase.
The analysis of ancient languages has shown
that in every major language, number words were
an integral part of the evolution of that
language. The words for the numbers were an
integral part of the evolution of that
language....
Before I conclude, I feel I ought to add some
personal comments on these interests, and how l
came by them. In Ceylon I had seen very good
teachers and I had begun to like Mathematics -but
it was in Cambridge when my interests took
definite shape.
Cambridge had a famous School of Mathematics
then. There were 4 Professors, Hardy, Littlewood,
Dirac, Eddington - what a great combination, with
many distinguished staff members also.
In older times in Cambridge, every one who
entered the University first did the Maths Tripos
Part I. Thereafter one either changed to other
subjects like Theology, Medicine, Law, or
continued with Maths. A certain element of this
was still there in my Cambridge days. 'Those who
continued on with the Maths did at the end of 3
years the Maths Tripos Part II a prestigious and
most demanding examination. Till recent times
most of the Maths staff in British Universities
would be drawn from those who had done this
course. The pass list was arranged in order of
merit. The best group among them were called
Wranglers.
The one who came first was called Senior
Wrangler. He was much honoured in British
Educational life. At the graduation ceremonies of
every year it was the Senior Wrangler who got his
degree first. Incidentally the one who came last,
but passed, got the Wooden Spoon in the same
ceremony. There used to be quite keen competition
for both top and bottom places.
A few years before I got to Cambridge, the
system of issuing the pass list in order of merit
had ceased. There still continued an old custom
where the results of this particular Tripos were
read out by the Chairman of Examiners at the
Senate House at a time and date prescribed by
Statute. I recollect that during my year, I went
along with other friends from Christs to "learn
the worst" as we could say.
A story is told of Lord Kelvin famous
mathematician over 100 years ago. He was Thomson
in his younger days. He loved sleeping in so
instead of going to the Senate House himself he
sent a College servant to find out the results.
Thomson still in bed as the man returned asked
him "Who came second ?". The memorable reply was
"You Sir".
To proceed with my story. It was by a chance
circumstance that Professor Dirac agreed to
supervise me for the Ph.D. He usually did not
take on students. The Faculty Board had informed
me 3 months earlier that they would let me know
who my supervisor would be - and I had not heard,
and the Academic Year was almost starting. Then
one morning I had a letter from Professor Dirac
in his very neat handwriting. It went something
like this: As I am appointed your supervisor, you
must come up and see me sometime. I lecture
Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays at 10. The best
time to catch me is immediately after a
lecture.
I saw him at the earliest opportunity. That is
how I got started. The succeeding years were
great times. Concentrated delights, frustrations,
foolishness, errors, lucky guesses or ideas that
worked - all made up the Ph.D. years and later
the Fellowship and lecturing years.
Thoughts on Education
After 45 years as an academic, I feel I could
say something about the learning process, at any
rate in the mathematical field. First, one has to
have a passionate and desperate desire to
understand something, to formulate a problem,
narrow it down and concentrate upon it. Days,
weeks, months, maybe, and result is often
frustration and temporary abandonment. Then a
period of incubation when the subconscious is at
work. Then unexpectedly comes illumination.
To take a homely example. I try to recall
something and my memory does not oblige, however
hard I try. Then some time later, perhaps the
next day or so, I am not thinking of the matter
at all, and the answer pops up. In scientific
matters, those moments of illumination are the
landmarks of discovery. The day Archimedes was at
his bath, and ran through the streets of
Syracuse, clad only in the rapture of a new
discovery, should be celebrated as the first
recorded version of a great moment of human
emotion and illumination.
It is said of Ramanujam that he would go to
sleep thinking up some difficult problem, and the
next morning he would wake up with a proposition
in the theory of numbers or some long series
expansion. When asked to explain how the
proposition came to him, he would say that his
Mother Goddess had explained it all to him in a
dream. We may paraphrase and say that the
subconscious was active during his sleep.
In the fourth stage of the learning process,
one recasts the results and systematises it.
Thus, the four stages are : concentration,
incubation, illumination and systematisation.
Einstein was once asked whether his life had
been of great thrills with all those discoveries.
He said that when he was thinking and
concentrating hard, it was pain and anguish. The
pleasure came later after a new idea triggered,
or when one realised the scope of what one had
done.
So education without the pain of concentration
and effort is no education . at all. It is a
fashionable trend nowadays for organised
education to skip all the difficult things, and
go through the motion with easy things. As
parents we get concerned that whereas, education
should be concerned with thought development,
there is a temptation in schools to go in for
thought elimination devices. Even in this age of
gadgets and machines, the human being is the most
intricate and exciting of all machines, and it
has the further merit that it is about the only
one that can be mass produced by unskilled labour
with comparative little expense and so much more
pleasure.
Soon after the last War, the New Maths became
the vogue, especially by the persuasion of
American professors of mathematical education.
They said it will bring mathematics within the
reach of all - a most laudable objective. Over
the years it has not quite turned out that way.
In some countries, they have taken advantage of
the language precisions of new maths to teach the
contents of the old in -the new language. In some
other countries the time for Mathematics has
gradually dwindled and the contents have
suffered.
I often wake up with a bad dream -with the
image of the grin of the Cheshire Cat. In the
story, the grin remained, while the cat
disappeared. My bad dream is about the New Maths
where the newness like the grin remains, and the
contents like the cat have gradually disappeared.
I say it was a bad dream. I hope it has little
relation to the facts.
John Adams the historian has said : There are
two educations. One teaches us how to live, the
other how to make a living. We need to keep these
perspectives in balance.
Any thought on the future of universities ?
First, about University Mathematics. I indicated
before that Mathematics being an Abstract Art,
there is the danger of it becoming isolated from
the rest of Academia. In the 19th or early 20th
centuries, mathematics made great impact on
philosophy, science, education etc. Nowadays they
are too isolated.
There is the need for abstract mathematics,
which is essential for long term perspectives.
There is also the need to be in touch with the
real world. These two aspects have to be kept in
balance. While this is a matter of worldwide
concern, I am confident that here at La Trobe the
balance could be kept, and Mathematics will
continue to prosper.
It is very pleasing that University education
is now available for so many more students than
they were 45 years ago With expansion however
came also some problems.
I refer to one change that has come about in
universities. When I joined the staff there were
very few Ph.D's, but now that is the norm. This
is a very good thing, since academics are able to
continue research, despite the pressures of other
duties, having benefited by the earlier period of
intense research activity for the Ph.D. But this
Ph.D. cult also encourages narrowness. Whereas a
teacher of a subject should see it in its
wholeness, the Ph.D. area often tends to take
over.
I believe that student needs and subject
progress require from staff a balanced
approach.
I think also that while we love our special
worlds and love the University world, we overlook
that we are in the total world of life and living
and cannot escape the demands, the joys and
sorrows of the wider world. Universities were
centres of great liberal human values, which
spread to all corners of the world. Universities
are homes-of Good Causes, even if lost causes.
Our world can have in it so much sadness and
savagery. 'Every man for himself" the elephant
said, as he danced among the chickens.
Many of us know of C.P. Snow and the Two
Cultures. He was a fellow of the same College and
so I knew him quite well. He died a couple of
years ago. When I visited Cambridge soon after, I
found that the Urn containing his ashes is kept
on a pedestal on the edge of the old swimming
pool at Christ, where there or four previous Urns
from 2 to 300 years are also kept. A verse on the
plinth attracted my attention. It may have been
with C.P. Snow's approval or his wish. It is from
a Jewish Father of 2000 years ago, Hellier the
Elder. It goes:
If I am not for myself, who am I ?
If I am for myself alone,
whoam ? If not now, wHen ?
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