Celebratio Mathematica

This is an ex­cerpt of the speech “Re­dis­cov­er my broth­er Shoshi­chi,” presen­ted at the me­mori­al re­cep­tion held May 25, 2013, at the Uni­versity of Tokyo. The com­plete speech is at shoshichikobay­ashi.com.

I real­ize how dif­fer­ent was the world around Shoshi­chi, the first son of our fam­ily, from that around me, the third son, al­though we were raised by the same par­ents. I knew pretty much about his ca­reer, but I was not well aware of what Shoshi­chi felt or thought in his youth.

He pub­lished sev­er­al es­says in a Ja­pan­ese journ­al, Math­em­at­ic­al Sem­in­ar, and else­where, but I read them for the first time only after he had passed away. Shoshi­chi was a quiet per­son like our moth­er and did not say much even to us, his young­er broth­ers, about his memor­ies and stor­ies of young­er days. I wish I had read these es­says while he was alive; then I could have asked more de­tails. Since my child­hood, Shoshi­chi has been my role mod­el, teach­er, and the per­son I re­spec­ted most among those I have per­son­ally known. He has been my hero, so to speak.

Soon after his birth our par­ents moved to Tokyo and opened a futon (Ja­pan­ese bed) store in Koenji, Su­g­i­n­ami-ku. By the time I grew to the age when I could re­mem­ber things, our par­ents moved the store to Ky­odo, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. Ap­par­ently Shoshi­chi liked math­em­at­ics since his child­hood, but he had some dif­fi­culty with a home­work as­sign­ment giv­en when he was a fifth- or sixth-grader, in which the stu­dent was asked to com­pute the volume of the cone that can be cre­ated from a fan shape. He re­calls this in­cid­ent in his es­say “Deeply im­pressed by a beau­ti­ful the­or­em” in the May 1973 is­sue of Math­em­at­ics Sem­in­ar.

In April 1944 Shoshi­chi entered Chitose Middle School in Tokyo. This school em­phas­ized mil­it­ary train­ing, but dis­cus­sions with the older stu­dents began his think­ing of go­ing on to high school. It was a big sur­prise for me to find that it was not un­til he entered middle school that he de­veloped the idea of go­ing to a high school, des­pite the fact that he was tal­en­ted enough to be in­spired by the Py­thagorean The­or­em.

In the spring of 1945 when he be­came a second-year stu­dent of the middle school, our fam­ily evac­u­ated from Tokyo and moved to Mi­n­am­i­saku, Nagano-Ken, and the war ended soon after. Thanks to the kind people of Hiraga Vil­lage, the fam­ily stayed there un­til the fall of 1948. When Shoshi­chi be­came a fourth-year stu­dent of Noz­a­wa Middle School1 there, the math­em­at­ics teach­er was Mr. Mun­eo Hay­ashi. His en­counter with Mr. Hay­ashi turned out to be a gi­ant step to nur­ture the math­em­atician Shoshi­chi. He writes about that peri­od in an­oth­er es­say, “The math­em­atician I luck­ily en­countered: Mun­eo Hay­ashi, math teach­er in middle school.”

It seems that Mr. Hay­ashi’s en­cour­age­ment al­lowed Shoshi­chi to gain con­fid­ence to ap­ply to Ichikoh (high school), and our par­ents came to real­ize that their first son was tal­en­ted enough to ad­vance to Ichikoh and then Todai (Uni­versity of Tokyo). Shoshi­chi must have been the pride and emo­tion­al main­stay of our par­ents, who had lost everything in the war.

In 1948 Shoshi­chi suc­ceeded in en­ter­ing Ichikoh in his fourth year at middle school (skip­ping the fifth year), and the fol­low­ing year he entered the Uni­versity of Tokyo un­der the new edu­ca­tion sys­tem just in­tro­duced. In 1951 he ad­vanced to the math­em­at­ics de­part­ment, the Di­vi­sion of Sci­ences, and stud­ied with the late Pro­fess­or Kent­aro Yano (1912–1993), who en­cour­aged Shoshi­chi to strive to win the French Gov­ern­ment’s Schol­ar­ship. I was in a ju­ni­or high school at that time, and I re­mem­ber well that Shoshi­chi at­ten­ded French classes at Athénée Français and In­sti­tut Français du Ja­pon on his way home after a day of study­ing at Todai.

He was told that the ex­am­in­a­tion for the French Gov­ern­ment Schol­ar­ship was stiff and ad­vised to make a first tri­al when he was a seni­or at Todai. To his and Pro­fess­or Yano’s sur­prise, he made it in his first at­tempt.

After a year of study in France, he moved to the Uni­versity of Wash­ing­ton in Seattle, where he got his Ph.D. in less than two years. I was won­der­ing all these years why he did not go to Prin­ceton or Har­vard, where­as he ad­vised me to go to Prin­ceton later. He ex­plains his situ­ation at that time in an­oth­er es­say, “My teach­ers, my friends and my math­em­at­ics: the peri­od when I stud­ied in the United States” in Math­em­at­ics Sem­in­ar, Ju­ly 1982.

In re­capit­u­lat­ing Shoshi­chi’s life from his child­hood un­til his mar­riage, I be­lieve that his en­coun­ters with his seni­ors at Chitose Middle School mo­tiv­ated Shoshi­chi to think about go­ing to a high school. Mr. Mun­eo Hay­ashi at Noz­a­wa Middle School dis­covered Shoshi­chi’s tal­ent in math­em­at­ics and took time per­son­ally to nur­ture it. Pro­fess­or Kent­aro Yano en­cour­aged him to study in France. Dr. Kat­sumi Nom­izu egged Shoshi­chi on to study in the US. Pro­fess­or Al­lendo­er­fer hired him as an as­sist­ant. Shoshi­chi’s friends and all of these won­der­ful en­coun­ters served as the sources of en­ergy that drove Shoshi­chi to work as a math­em­atician for over fifty-five years. He led a fruit­ful life, blessed with a won­der­ful spouse and fam­ily.