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Luis Seco Interview - Transcript Written By Richard Cerezo
Completed June 15, 2012 Interview conducted on May 11, 2012 by Andrea
Yeomans 1
Andrea Luis What sparked your early
interest in mathematics? Um, Richard Feynmann once said that um, the
reason for the usefulness of math is that the same
equations have the same solutions. I didn't know
Richard Feynman when I was becoming a mathematician, but I think that sentence
summarizes very well how I felt about mathematics when I chose to study mathematics, many many
years ago.
And how did that inform your early research
decisions? Basically, the same way. I always felt that
mathematics has a universality to it that I always
found very very appealing. So, uh my choice of
research topics were never motivated by the end
objective at hand but by the building blocks that
you have to develop along the way. I always found
that to be much more interesting. Um, it's been a
long term relationship between me and math always
and I always make my decisions based on the long
term, never the short term. And is there a specific
reason for that? Um, that's the way I am. That's perhaps the
best answer. I of course know many mathematicians,
they all look at math in a different way, they
all feel math differently. In my case it was the journey
more than the destination that was the objective of everything I did.
And how did Charles Fefferman become your PhD
advisor? 2
Andrea Luis Um, because I selected him and he agreed.
Uh, now I have to say, when I arrived at Princeton
in 1985, I was. One thing was very clear to me,
which is, I wanted to look around, um, I wanted
to know all the professors, I wanted to know all the
researchers, before I made up my mind of what I
was going to do. It was very tempting to go there
with a prespecified objective as to what I wanted
to do. I knew that I did not have enough information. I wanted to collect more information
so I could make an informed decision. But I can
say that it took me no more than a week or two. To
realize that, he was different. Um, his approach to math was very much similar to mine, very
personal. Um, very much focused on the building blocks. Uh, where, um, the objective was not
the goal, it was the journey that made the difference.
So there was this alignment of uh, feelings, uh,
between him and I and that drew me close to him
from the first few days that I was at Princeton. The Chicago School of
Analysis expanded through the influence of Alberto
Calderon to include many Spanish speaking students
do you see how that history can lead to participation
by other groups in mathematics?
3 Andrea Luis
Yes, I think what they have done is remarkable and
is truly remarkable. From a mathematical point of
view they did something historical. Um, they developed tools that were completely new and
managed to revolutionize not one but several fields. More than that um, many of the
mathematicians that were part of that school they
did not stay within the realms of the school for a
very long time. They left that group of problems they were working on to go and do other things.
They were uh, explorers. Uh, they had developed a
very unique GPS system or something that allowed them to leave what they were doing and very
quickly dominate other fields. That was remarkable. Um. In my case, I was an heir
to some of that. I had, I joined Charles Fefferman
when he was already outside of that initial field
of activity. He was working on, uh, mathematical
physics at that point in time. He was perhaps the
first mathematical physicist to come out of the
school of, Chicago School. So, I had an advantage, which is, I had already withnessed that first
step in the evolution. From that core of competence
arising from the Chicago School and how that got
to be used in areas that were totally unpredicted to any of the participants. That was a very
powerful uh, learning experience for me back then.
What was it like to be a student of Charles
Fefferman? If I have to explain, I'll have to use an
analogy. Imagine you are at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York looking at a Jackson *** that they
have, that goes wall to wall. You do that, at the
same time, you're listening to Mozart's 41st Symphony
and you're doing all of this while you're climbing
Mount Everest on a mountain bike. That's probably the closest it feels. To being a student of
Charles Fefferman. And what research problems
are you working on right now?
4 Andrea Luis
My area of activity right now is focused on risk
management, financial risk management and financial asset management. Um, for those
of you who may not know much about this, um. These
are fields, that have developed within the financial
sector, somewhat independently over the last 50
years. Um, risk management has to do with the
banking sector and what the regulators have done
to the banking sector to mitigate losses as much
as possible. Asset management is what started in
the financial sector maybe, it was the beginning of the 20th century. Which is what investors
have been doing over the last 100 years and what
I'm interested in now is bringing those two fields
under the same roof. I'm trying to come up with
research themes which are asset management in
their objectives but are risk management in their
methods and that is creating a very novel approach
to risk management, one that I find fascinating. One that my students find fascinating and
one that led to the creation of a company actually
does, that, manages assets from a risk management
perspective. And within that, how do you
choose the directions that you go in your research?
I have a tremendous advantage, which is, I run a
company. A company that invests real money. A lot
of real money. Um, that gives me a vision as to
what's relevant and an industrial point of view,
which is very unique. I have the ability, have the
pleasure of being able to look at the problems that we deal with on a day to day basis and
find the elements of math which are underlying,
but hidden in a lot of those problems and for
several years now this has been the main driver for
a lot of the research that takes place in my lab
at the University of Toronto.
How has your education in mathematics, played a role
in the field and the work you do now?
5 Andrea Luis
In several ways. Um, if I go back to the phrase by
Feynman, that the same equations have the same
solutions. Um, it is this universality of math
that allows you to very quickly make analogies and
resolve problems, um, in very unique ways. That
has been one. But there's been more, more than
that. This ability that mathematicians have, to
look at a problem and figure out what's superficial to the problem and what's critical
to the problem, to be able to strip off the problem
of unneccesary complications is also a very good
way of um, selecting research problems, identifying research problems within an industrial
environment and providing some path for a possible
solution. How should the quality of
research be judged? That's a very difficult question. Um, research
is playing a very new role in society now. Um,
it used to be the case that research was always
a long term venture. Um, the renaissance, um,
probably led to the industrial revolution and the
two are 200/300 years apart. That was probably the
timeframe, um, during which research activity became relevant to society. That timeframe
has shrunk to a very unusual, which, it's very
often now in the lifespan of a human life that we
see inventions become, um, practical. Um, it's
becoming very difficult now to judge research, but
at the same time, research has an opportunity that
it never had before, which is, it's impact, it's
societal impact has risen tremendously. Um, this
is creating waves of opinion as to how research should be judged. It's changing the way people
react to research. In good ways, and in bad ways.
On the one hand, it makes us more demanding on
research because we do see that immediate benefit
research can have. On the other hand, we run the
risk of forgeting about the longterm. And we need
to realize that research is a long term activity. A good research activity must fail, 99% of
the time. And that must be understood. That's
something unthinkable in medicine for example. You
cannot allow 99% of your patients to die. But in
research, you have to, otherwise you're not taking
enough risk. Research in today's world, is perhaps
the riskiest activity and it should be that way.
And, when risk is so high, the stakes must also be
very high and that makes judging research a very
difficult activity. 6
Andrea Luis What is your view on
research being viewed as basic or applied?
I no longer believe in that distinction. It's interesting that, where that comes from. It's
interesting where that distinction comes from. As
a mathematician, mathematics was not too different from what we call engineering today, up until
1850, more or less. In 1850, something very interesting happened, which is, uh, mathematics
started to develop internal paradoxes. Um, it's a
very well known example, that Euler never believed
the findings of Fourier. Which we now, we all know
they are completely true. Um, that drove mathematics into a crisis. A crisis that took
at least 50 years to resolve. This is the area
... This is the era when mathematicians or logicians
like Frege were wondering as to what the definition of a number should be. That was
the result of a crisis, but it created something
very important which was the distinction between
pure and applied math. Pure math was the new math
that was created as an attempt to put order into
the chaos that math had become. At the same time,
the old path that mathematics was taking as a
solution to everyday problems continuted, but it became
more what we would call engineering today. That's
finished. That um, um, ... That bifurcation of
disciplines is finished. Math continues to have a
short term, medium term, and long term picture. Which is relevant for any mathematician that
is doing research. But I don't believe that there
is such thing as a pure or applied math. And
there's lots of examples that show that, where something
is obviously a pure math advance which very quickly leads to an application and vice-versa.
Applied problems, they very quickly lead to, to
um, fundamental developments. Uh, pure and applied
math I think have become no more than poetic descriptions of a recent past which I think
is no longer with us.
How do you see the practice of research evolving in the
future? 7
Andrea Luis I see room for increasing amounts of collaborative
research, especially as a mathematician. Mathematics was a discipline that was for
years, um, married to a certain discipline. Uh, Physics
in the 20th century, Engineering in the 19th century. That's finished. Um, mathematics
now has very deep relationships with many fields.
Uh, medicine, psychology. It makes mathematics
the centrepiece for many fundamental developments
in society today and that's going to change,
that's going to change we feel math and that's going
to change the way we judge math going forward.
And how will we judge math going forward?
Another difficult question. Um, math contains internal dynamics as a discipline, as a mature
discipline. Which will continue to be the driving
force for mathematics evolution. But at the same
time, math has relationships with many other disciplines that are breaking down walls of
separation between disciplines. So, it's going to
be hard. It's going to be challenging to, be able
to take a both views into account. One, math as a
discipline with internal dynamics that continues to drive forward and math as a centrepiece
of relationships of many other disciplines.
Do you think it's possible to predict the research
directions of specific disciplines?
Impossible. Otherwise it would not be research. Okay, you can predict many things. But as
I said earlier. Research is the activity which is
riskiest, is the activity where uncertainty is at
it's highest and it has to continue that way, otherwise it will not be research. The day
where we can predict results, the day were we can
predict evolution of everything, that day research
would have died. Do you see mathematics
playing a different role in industry in the future?
8 Andrea Luis
Definitely. Mathematics has... Industry, in the
19th century. Industry in the 20th century was
based on the domination of physical space. In the
later part of the 20th century, certainly in the
21st century, industries are now focused, successful industries are now more focused
on the domination of mental space. Facebook, Google,
even Apple, they've realized that successful businesses
need to thrive in mental space. Mathematics was
relevant in industry and in society as the computational partner for the domination of
physical space. And it was very well suited to do
that. Usually with engineering as the partner. In
the 21st cenutry, that is no longer needed. Math
is very well equipped to be a first world partner
in the domination of mental space. And therefore, companies are finding mathematicians to be
um, much more useful in their everyday struggles
to innovate to be better than the others and
to dominate that mental space where they expect
to succeed.