nspeds
June 15, 2006, 2:58pm
10
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<p>Yeah… in about seven years or so…?</p>
<p>Whenever this happens, I like to think of what Saul Kripke’s mother said to the mathematics department at Harvard when they offered him a position:</p>
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In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, ‘My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first.’
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<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/books/28krip.html?ex=1296104400&en=9b8c06355a8dc486&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss[/url] ”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/books/28krip.html?ex=1296104400&en=9b8c06355a8dc486&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss</a></p> ;