Original version belong to this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason many people are repelled: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike other creative processes, like making audible music or making visible paintings, mathematics is largely an internal process, hidden from view. “It sounds a bit mysterious. I’m very curious,” he said.
His curiosity eventually led him to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Paris Diderot in the late 1990s. He spent the next decade studying geometric group theory before leaving mathematical research and becoming a founded a machine learning startup in 2010.
Through it all, he never stopped questioning the true meaning of doing math. Bessis is not satisfied with just solving the problem. He wants to better understand—and help others understand—how mathematicians think and practice their craft.
In 2022, he published his answer—a book titled Mathematica: A secret world of intuition and curiositywhich he hopes will “explain what is going on inside the brain of someone who is doing math,” he said. But more than that, he added, “this is a book about the inner human experience.” It was translated from its original French into English earlier this year.
IN MathematicsBessis makes the provocative claim that whether you realize it or not, you are constantly doing math – and that you have the ability to expand your mathematical abilities far beyond what you thought possible. Bessis argues that eminent mathematicians such as Bill Thurston and Alexander Grothendieck did not owe their mathematical prowess to their inner genius. Rather, they become talented mathematicians because they are willing to continually ask questions and hone their intuition. They develop new ideas, then use logic and language to test and improve them.
However, according to Bessis, the way math is taught in school emphasizes the logic-based part of the process, while the more important factor is intuition. Mathematics should be seen as a dialogue between two things: between reason and instinct, between language and abstraction. It’s also a form of physical exercise, like yoga or martial arts – something that can be improved through practice. It requires tapping into a childlike state and embracing one’s imagination, including the mistakes that come with it.
