Beautiful Minds Minus Hollywood Glamour

I am the wife of a mathematician--information that used to be a conversation-stopper. But not lately, because of the Oscar-nominated film “A Beautiful Mind.”

Suddenly, people are interested in my husband’s species. What are they really like? Of course they don’t all have paranoid delusions like the guy in the movie, but aren’t they--a bit weird?

I had met a few of my husband’s colleagues early in our relationship, but my first exposure en masse happened in Helsinki, at a congress of mathematicians. At the opening party, my first impression was of hairy, unkempt men--and a few women--with terrible posture, some of whom talked to themselves and bumped into things. That was 20 years ago. Today, I think of them as hairy, unkempt men with terrible posture, some of whom talk to themselves and bump into things. But that’s not all.

Here’s my favorite story about Norbert Wiener, the brilliant mathematician who had just moved to a new house in Belmont, Mass., in the early 1950s. He was returning home from MIT, deep into a mathematical problem. It was dark and he found himself on a street with houses and lawns that he didn’t recognize. A small girl pedaled up on her bicycle and Wiener said, “Excuse me, I seem to be lost. Do you know where Prof. Wiener lives?” The girl looked at him and sighed. “You’re home, Daddy.”

I once tagged along at another congress, in Albuquerque. (I stopped going to these things when I realized that even at dinner, they spoke of nothing but mathematics. Some even brought their laptops, which they parked to the right of their dinner plates.) My husband had just given a paper on Kummer’s theory of ideal prime factors (don’t ask) and the department head took us and a few other leading lights in the math department to dinner. I remember a so-called Italian restaurant with unspeakable food. As usual, the conversation was mathematics. I played with my spaghetti and stared absently at the professor sitting opposite me. Suddenly, he jumped up. “Michael!” he said, grabbing his jacket and running out. We found out later he had forgotten to pick up his kid, who was being discharged from the hospital that afternoon.

Another time we were in Los Angeles, for my work this time. I had an appointment with my agent. As we sat in the waiting room, several gorgeous creatures sashayed by. One of them placed herself in one of the leather chairs. She crossed her legs as if it were a dance step. One leg shot out very straight very slowly. Very slowly. Then, toe pointed, leg one moved onto leg two. I looked over at my husband. His nose was in his notebook, his pen moving furiously on the page. He was doing what he always does when he sits down (sometimes he does it standing up): a formula.

Now here’s the truth: I’m jealous. I love what I do, but I’m not obsessed. Especially if I’m writing, my favorite thing is an interruption. To say mathematicians love their work doesn’t begin to cover it. They inhale their work. They exhale it. They drink it. They swallow it. They do not sweat life because life doesn’t count. Numbers count. Getting from here to there with numbers. Journeys of love. Into infinity.