Simon Phillips Norton: Travelling by Numbers

by Alexander Masters.
Daily Telegraph (U.K.), 8 August 2008.

In this article, author Alexander Masters describes a portion of a three-week boat and train trip he took to the Arctic Circle last year with the subject of a future book: mathematician Simon Phillips Norton.

Masters scheduled the trip, hoping to learn more about the typically reticent Norton and his work on the monster group. Norton was a mathematical prodigy who won a gold medal at the International Math Olympiad at the age of 15 and again at 16.

Masters writes that "in his teens and twenties [Norton] was considered, potentially, the greatest British mathematician since Newton." These days, however, although Norton still publishes and gives talks, "the mania for mathematics has gone, like an illness," Masters notes. During the trip, Masters does not learn much from Norton, a man Masters describes as having "no sense of anecdotes or extended conversation" and "no self-curiosity." Occasionally Norton speaks of mathematics, but he is easily distracted by hunger or with the need to identify his position on one of the maps he carries with him: "more than 10 minutes away from a map and he starts to feel he has lost his connection with the world." However, Masters does think of a subtitle for his book as he considers Norton's ready smile: "Simon Phillips Norton: The biography of a happy man."

--- Claudia Clark