Happy (20+25)*(20+25)

Happy new year!

2025 is the square of a triangular number, somethiing that won’t happen again for a thousand years (literally).

Indeed, the square of the triangle is an interesting graph, being one of only two finite homogeneous graphs (the other is the pentagon). Indeed, I don’t have to say whether I mean the Cartesian square or the categorical square, since for the triangle they happen to be isomorphic: the graph is self-complementary.

So what will 2025 bring? For me, at least, it will bring retirement, or maybe that is redundancy. The Head of School believes that on 1 March I will become Professor Emeritus and continue to have the use of my office, the library, the computer network, and so on; but Human Resources think that, after a month’s grace I will be out on my ear. It is a bit stressful not knowing with just two months to go; but either way it will be softer than leaving QMUL, when I was given two weeks over Christmas and New Year to clear my office, with no advance warning.

Looking wider, it is certainly difficult to be hopeful about the world at present. I was born two years after the Second World War, and it is hard for me to remember a bleaker time. Aldous Huxley’s recipe for saving the world was to persuade people to open their eyes and see who and where they were; that is not going to happen, with so many people finding the echo chamber of social media more attractive than the “real world”.

Bob Dylan said,

Life is sad, Life is a bust. All you can do is Do what you must. Do what you must do And do it well.

That will be my aim in 2025.