“The utmost bound of human thought”
John Tate ’42 As a student, John Tate was not accustomed to missing many math problems. The son of a prominent experimental physicist at the University of Minnesota, Tate took to mathematics at an early age. “I don’t know why, but I’ve just been fascinated—and have been since I was very young—with math.” Tate likens it to solving puzzles, but the mathematics he contemplates is deeper. His field is number theory, which he thinks of as “God’s puzzles.” The Princeton and Harvard graduate discovered his strengths weren’t necessarily in speed, or solving existing problems; his forte was thinking of new directions and discovering new problems to solve. Many of his discoveries took place during his 36-year career as a professor at Harvard University; after leaving Harvard, he taught and researched at the University of Texas at Austin for another 20 years. Many of his contributions to the field bear his name, including the Tate module, Tate curve, Tate cycle, Hodge-Tate decompositions, Tate cohomology, Serre-Tate parameter, Lubin-Tate group, Tate trace, Shafarevich-Tate group, and Néron-Tate height. In the world of math Tate is a rock star, but most of us can’t hear the music. In an interview broadcast on Norwegian television after he was awarded the Abel Prize in Oslo, Tate described the vexing isolation of his cerebral field. “It’s just beautiful. Unfortunately it’s only beautiful to the initiated, to the people who do it. It can’t really be understood or appreciated much on a popular level the way music can. You don’t have to be a composer to enjoy music, but in mathematics you do. That’s a really big drawback of the profession. A non-mathematician has to make a big effort to appreciate our work; it’s almost impossible.” For Tate, however, reaching new frontiers in mathematics didn’t feel like work. He disagrees with the Thomas Edison maxim that genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. “It’s not work!” says Tate, “ if it’s what you want to do! I think that’s why I was so successful. I enjoyed doing it.”
During a January 2011 visit to SPA, John Tate ’42 stopped in to talk with Upper School math teacher Bill Boulger, who showed Tate a math textbook belonging to John DeQ. Briggs, SPA’s headmaster during Tate’s time as a student.
Newly retired in his mid-80s, Tate is quick to point out that his retirement only means that he’s retired from teaching. “I’m still solving!” he says. He still thinks about mathematics, but he’s not really expecting to solve any more big problems. He says he’s “overawed” by what the young minds in his field are doing today. “Mathematics marches on. And it still fascinates me,” says Tate. None of Tate’s three daughters has followed in his mathematical footsteps, but he has a grandson who’s very keen. “It might have skipped a generation,” he observes. spring 2011 | SPA
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