Tag Archives: education

Remembering Kelly

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This past week I was saddened to learn of the death of mathematician and teacher David C. Kelly, the founder of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program (HCSSiM). “Kelly”, as everyone called him, had a huge impact not just on my career but on the careers of people spanning several generations.

I knew Kelly for nearly fifty years. At the time we met I was a high school student who’d done well enough in inter-school math competitions to earn a spot on the Nassau County team, and when I and my team-mates went to the Atlantic Regional Math League competition, Kelly was there, spreading the word about HCSSiM. I thought he looked remarkably like Kurt Vonnegut, though not everyone agreed. Judge for yourself:

Not Kurt.
Not Kelly.

The “17” in the background in the former picture is important, as you already know if you read my essay “Will ’17 Be the Year of the Pig?” And if you haven’t read that essay, and you’ve wondered why I post my blog on or around the 17th of each month … well, read that essay.

I don’t have anything to write about the summer program that I didn’t already write back in 2017, but I do want to share my two favorite Kelly stories. I’m sure I’ll get some details wrong, and alas, Kelly isn’t around to set me straight, but I think he would agree that my versions are true in spirit. (And if any of you have corrections, please post them in the Comments!)

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Can Math Save Your Soul?

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“No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.”

— William K. Clifford

“Nobody knew math could be so complicated.”
— nobody ever

The most truthful — and, to me, the most infuriating — thing a certain public figure1 uttered over the course of his ongoing career was “It is what it is.”

Given that he was referring to the deaths of over a hundred thousand people — deaths that, mere months earlier, he had declared with utter confidence would not occur, thereby causing unjustified optimism and imprudent risk-taking — I was angry. I felt that the moment called for an apology, not a tautology.

And yet, who can argue with the proposition that things are what they are? Isn’t this insight — in particular, the insight that our wishing that the truth were different doesn’t change what’s true — the bedrock on which all of science rests?

But belief in the existence of one Truth, in and of itself, is no guarantee that you won’t wind up in some silo of wrong-headedness, believing in wrong answers to important questions, listening only to the people who agree with you. If you want to stay out of such an epistemic prison, you should also believe that Truth is hard to get at, that no one person or group of people is likely to arrive at much of it, and that at any given moment you probably grasp less of it than you think you do.

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