Retirement party

Our retirement party was last Tuesday.

We had two very nice talks from people we had taught, and whose careers had perhaps been influenced by our teaching: Mia Tackney, who applies Rosemary’s methods for design of experiments (including Hasse diagrams) to the area of clinical trials, and Scott Harper, who took my Advanced Combinatorics module and now has a joint paper with me and three others (the section on Cauchy numbers is largely his work). Scott’s main message is that, even when we have a definitive result, like sharp converses to Caiuchy’s and Sylow’s theorems, that is not the end of the story: something with which I completely agree.

I’d like to share an insight from Scott’s talk, which a number of clever people don’t seem to get. Saying that finite group theory is finished now since the finite simple groups are all known is like saying chemistry is finished because all the elements are known.

After the talks and a reception (thanks to the School) we went to Zizzi’s for a very enjoyable dinner.

Several good friends were unable to be there for one or another combination of circumstances. Sorry to miss you!