Terence Tao recounts lying on the floor 'being the plane' to crack a prize-winning math proof
akbirthko · x · 2026-11-13
A resurfaced Terence Tao anecdote: in desperation, he lay on the floor with his eyes closed imagining himself being the rotating plane, visualizing the base point moving and rolling in x and y. That let him see he needed a rotation matrix depending on both time and space whose derivatives behaved a certain way — retrospectively, flattening a connection by choosing a gauge. The algebra happened to admit a nearly-flattening gauge, and after frantic pen-and-paper calculation he wrote the paper that won him the Bôcher Prize. His aunt in Australia once walked in on him rolling on the floor; the explanation "thinking about math" somehow sufficed.
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