Yarr! – The Weblog of Bob Heffernan

This is the lovely view of the north wing of UCC’s main quadrangle (or “the Quad” as it’s known) that I was presented with as I walked from the Library to my office earlier this morning. We have been having lovely weather here in Ireland (or in Cork, at least) as evidenced by the bits of blue between those nice white cumulus clouds. It’s that so very lovely sort of weather, cold and dry, crisp and cool. The sort of weather that seems to purify the air and charge it with an energy usually absent from that generally dismal continuum of greyness and wetness that is Irish weather. So, invigorated by my favourite type of weather I walked past the Quad and felt compelled to take a picture. UCC has several nice buildings, this being the oldest and by far the nicest. One might even feel, while walking past the Quad, that one was in a venerable and respectable institution of higher learning. Well, it does depend on what direction one is walking, for as I walked to my office there loomed behind me the horrible monstrosity of 1960s aesthetic ineptitude that is UCC’s library (named after our most prestigious mathematician, George Boole). Not too far off is the Kane Building, home to the science department and this too is singularly displeasing to the eye. The other buildings on campus fall somewhere between our beautiful quadrangle and our hideous science building in terms of architectural beauty.

This is now my fifth year as a student at UCC. I studied here for four years as an undergraduate and am now studying for at least this year as a postgraduate. I like the University in many ways, although things are different here than I might have anticipated when first arriving over four years ago. The institution largely lacks that intellectual atmosphere that I expected to find in a university. I had imagined that I might stroll into the bar at lunchtime to find young men and women discussing philosophy and literature over a coffee or a whisky, the lecture halls full of excited and inquisitive young minds yearning for learning. Things are, in reality, a little different. This is, I think, primarily due to a certain pressure in Irish society for a young person to finish school, get a degree and get a job. A university course is a means to an end, the end being a little piece of paper that enhances your chances of getting a better job with better pay. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it does alter the atmosphere of the college. I’m sure the same is true in most places, intellectual curiosity is probably as rare a quantity as it always has been. Of course, it’s possible that what masquerades as ‘intellectualism’ in most people is just snobbery anyway.

Still, sometimes when I walk past one of our beautiful old buildings I can almost imagine that I am back in a time when universities felt more like institutions of learning than degree printing factories, when professors and students alike wore silly robes and had funny accents. The glory days, when women weren’t allowed inside and a young man from a working class background like myself would never have been allowed to see the door either. Oh, the push and pull of progress.

Some evenings I stay in my office later than usual to get some extra work done. Things are so still and quiet at night, it is an ideal time to do some work, undisturbed by noises outside or people wandering around the building, &c. The picture shows you what my desk looks like this evening. A security guard just poked his head in the door to see if there was anybody in the room before he locked the doors of the building, but that is the last disturbance I will have until I decide to leave for home. I am using the few minutes it is taking the computer to crunch some numbers for me to write this post, so it will be a relatively short one.

I am sharing this room with one other student, another Msc. student (in Applied Mathematics). I am quite happy with the way my workspace has worked out. There should have been a third student but he appears to have little interesting in using his desk, so the two of us that remain have plenty of room and a spare desk to use as shared space. There are about seven postgraduate students in the room next door, complaining of overcrowding and lack of facilities. It was purely the luck of the draw that gave me this name. It just so happens that ‘H’ comes relatively early in the alphabet. Lucky me.

My computer has finished crunching, back to work…

No updates here as of late as I have been busy. This doesn’t mean I won’t keep updating in the future. I quite like my new format, and have enjoyed preparing the few posts I’ve come up with so far.

I’ll be back soon.

Here is a picture of a few of the books I am reading at the moment, all on the subject of “group theory” which is the area in which I am doing research for my MSc. thesis. Group theory is an area of mathematics, specifically of abstract algebra, and it is a particularly wonderful area indeed. Groups often naturally arise when dealing with the symmetries of other mathematical objects and so group theory is sometimes dubbed the “mathematics of symmetry”. James Newman summarised group theory as follows:

The theory of groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to something and then compares the results with the result of doing the same thing to something else, or something else to the same thing.

This is, I think, probably more accurate than some would like to admit.

Group theory is going to be an integral part of my life this year, and probably for many years to come, so I think I will write several posts on the topic over the next while, teasing out my thoughts on the matter. I think it would be interesting to try to explain why I love group theory while avoiding, as much as possible, technical details. Is it possible, I wonder, the communicate my passion for the area to somebody who has no formal background in mathematics?

Well, why do I love group theory? The first reason, and the one that I shall offer today, is the simple elegance of the area. On the one hand group theory is a rather abstract area, one that seems to bear very little resemblance to anything concrete, to anything real. Still, as a mathematical system it is quite simple. It takes only a few minutes to explain the basics of group theory and yet out of such simple beginnings a rich, varied and surprising structure can be developed. Group theory has that sort of elegance where, as is also often the case with number theory, simple questions can have very difficult answers and seemingly unrelated things can turn out to be related in the most unexpected ways. It is also one of those areas where simple and elegant proofs can often be found, there is none of the long winded proofery of other areas.

So, if I were to offer one reason for why I chose group theory as the area I would like to study in, I would have to say that it is the simple elegance of the theory that initially draws me.

Now, if only I could get through those books…