Building a Life in Dublin: the Early Years

I arrived in Dublin in 1986 to take up a position as Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at Trinity College. A relatively stable lifestyle established itself over the first two decades of living in Dublin. Something of a personal crisis developed towards the end of those two decades which came to a head in the summer of 2006. But that is another story.

On arrival in Trinity, two lecture courses were assigned to me; a second year lecture course on analysis in several real variables and a degree-level lecture course on algebraic topology. (By some weird coincidence, the two lecture courses I am currently teaching, during the semester in which I am writing this, are a second year module on analysis in several real variables and a degree-level module on algebraic topology.) So I settled down to prepare my lecture notes (writing them out in pencil on writing paper, so that I could copy the notes onto the blackboard to enable the students attending the lectures to make a verbatim copy). Also I spent a large portion of time in my first decade of teaching reading monographs and graduate-level textbooks to educate myself about areas of twentieth century pure mathematics that I had not already explored as a research student. Thus, for example, I worked through substantial textbooks, by Dixmier, on C^* algebras and Von Neumann algebras, written in mathematical French; I set out to learn about algebraic number theory (from textbooks such as that by Borevich and Shafarevich); I learned about Abelian categories from a monograph by Peter Freyd; I worked through textbooks on analytic functions of several complex variables (e.g., the monograph by Gunning and Rossi); I read at least substantial portions of textbooks on algebraic geometry by Griffiths and Harris, and by Hartshorne (though I lacked the persistence to get the end of those massive texts); I worked through textbooks on formal logic and axiomatic set theory which brought me to the point where I had worked through detailed proofs of the celebrated results of Gödel and Turing, and could grasp what “forcing” was about, and work through a proof of the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis from the standard basic axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Towards the end of my first decade in Dublin I developed an interest in areas of mathematical econoomics, and the work of Debreu, Balasko and others who approached topics in economics such as general equilibrium theory using methodology and results characteristic of twentieth century pure mathematics

One of my memories from that time is of going out to watch the St. Patrick's Day procession one cold March morning, and then returning College to spend the rest of the day working carefully through a few more pages of some mathematical textbook of the sort just described; because there was nothing else I wanted to do, or could contemplate doing that day!

When indoors in my own rooms, and not engaging in mathematics, I typically spent my time reading: typically exploring and re-reading English-language novels from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I read Ulysses twice, but immersed myself to a far greater extent in the short stories of Frank O'Connor and Seán Ó Faoláin and others. I had a shelf of books on Irish and European History, which I continually read and re-read. I bought, and worked through, a number of “teach yourself” language courses, with textbooks and cassette tapes. Later I would fill up another shelf or two with books on popular science and natural history, including books by John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins, and a complete set of the essays of Stephen Jay Gould.

Sometimes, especially when the weather was fine at weekends, I would use public transport to get out to areas of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains close to Dublin where I would set out on walks lasting several hours over and around the mountains.

And then there was music! I regularly attended concerts at the National Concert Hall and elsewhere in Dublin. I did not set out to join an amateur orchestra immediately on arrival in Dublin. But I did attend an evening course in chamber music, and some of the others attending persuaded me to join the orchestra to which they belonged. So I was regularly playing in Dublin orchestras from about a year after my arrival in Dublin. Also I regularly played chamber music with others, many evenings, and on weekend courses.

And during the summer vacation period and the period including Christmas and New Year, I would travel over to England to stay with my parents, and, at some point in the summer, we would go away on holiday together.

So basically, for the first two decades that I lived in Dublin, that was the pattern of my life. The entirety of my life!

And there was scope for an element of frivolity. A characteristic feature of academic life is the lack of a uniform institutional dress code. Certainly three decades ago, many of the older lecturers would be wearing suits and ties, and moreover would wear gowns when lecturing. (Certainly, especially if formally dressed, there is a lot of sense in wearing an academic gown when delivering chalk-and-talk lectures. Otherwise ones clothes would get thoroughly impregnated with chalk dust.) Other lecturers went around in open-necked shirts, or casual clothing. And indeed many of the older lecturers and professors dressed casually, whilst there were some young lecturers over the years who regularly dressed very smartly in suits and very natty ties

So, having put a little thought into the matter, I would typically turn up to deliver lectures attired in a jacket, typically a brown jacket or a Harris tweed jacket, with brown or grey trousers, a white or pale monochrome shirt and a tie. Then, after lectures had proceeded for a few weeks, and expectations had been established, I would occasionally show up to lecture without the tie. I would usually be wearing a tie again when delivering the lecture immediately following one at which I had turned up having ‘forgotten’ to put on a tie.

A few years after I started lecturing, I was ready to head to the lecture theatre to deliver the first lecture of the term, dressing in a fairly cheap suit, white shirt and tie, but then took a decision regarding the dress code for those lectures during that academic year, and in consequence removed and pocketed my tie just before entering the lecture theatre to deliver my first lecture. From that day onwards, I would rarely if ever be seen wearing a necktie.

That is, until about a decade or more ago. Noting that streets in the centre of Dublin, and indeed College Park, at lunchtimes and the early evening, on fine sunny days, would be throunged with business people in their smart suits, and white or pale monochrome open-necked shirts, I started thinking that, just for the hell of it, I would start to wear ties again ... at least on an occasional basis.

(Self portrait, taken 2006.)

But there were, and are, ground rules. At the time I arrived in Dublin I made the resolution never, ever, to turn up wearing a necktie to attend any concert at the National Concert Hall. And I have kept that resolution, scrupulously, without exception, to the present day. And if any sort of formal event is in prospect, I would opt for a dark suit, chosen from those reserved for such occasions, and a white open-necked shirt, unless, with considerable reluctance, I felt obliged to conform to some specified dress code for the event. Certainly three decades ago, if I turned up to a fairly event such as a wine reception in an open-necked shirt, when most if not all of the other men present were wearing ties, then I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. But of course times have changed.