262 A History ofMathematics
nodding acquaintance with intellectual property law. As in ancient Babylon, the military-industrial
complex is looking for trained personnel with the widest possible range; and mathematics as an
isolated nerdy pursuit of those unable to communicate their insights is no longer the goal, if it ever
was. This book would like to encourage readers by assuring them that the enriching culture of the
history of mathematics will make them more marketable, but we have a legal and moral duty to be
truthful. The knowledge that empires rise and fall is no use and not much comfort if you are out of
work in Pittsburgh.
Teachers, who deserve special words of praise and encouragement, may escape the global market
for longer — particularly if they choose to teach at a level or in a country where e-learning is too
difficult or expensive to be widely applied. They will be subject to the usual pressures to produce
results, and the mathematics to be taught will change constantly, particularly at the secondary
or higher level. The varieties of mathematics available are evolving, as we saw in chapter 10,
and computers, which do afford more scope for experiment and visualization than traditional
mathematics, have often become cheap enough, even outside the developed world, to be considered
essential learning aids. Teaching flourishes under conditions where it is freed from control and
dogmatism; the understanding that mathematics has a history can help with this (as we saw
Simone Weil claiming in the introduction). And here this book may be of use, in a modest way.
Is a different future possible? Nearly forty years ago, the universities which Eisenhower had
seen as controlled by government were in revolt. The radical mathematician Steve Smale received
the highest award (the Fields Medal) at the Moscow International Congress of Mathematicians,
1966; he chose the admittedly small and élite setting of the congress to launch an attack on the
United States’ war in Vietnam — and simultaneously (and with even less tact) against the Soviet
invasion of Hungary eight years earlier. Attacked by his government, he was seen by his peers as
the spokesman of a generation who wanted change. Remembered as an inspiring ‘moment’ by
many mathematicians and others, the episode was also something of a one-off, an idiosyncratic
statement which was not followed up by a widespread withdrawal of mathematicians from the
world of army grants and corporate employment. In today’s situation where mathematicians are
increasingly involved (like all citizens) with the problems of war and global inequality, they need to
consider their common destiny and how as participants in an international civil society they might
take action to control it.