That's a very good question, and I will try to answer it as best I can.
A bit about me
In high school I was drawn to the exact sciences. In the years 1986-1999 I was a student in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As an undergraduate student I majored in physics with mathematics as a minor subject. Halfway through I realized that math was what I was really interested in, and after completing my BSc I continued to graduate studies in mathematics. My advisor was Prof. Alexander Lubotzky, and my research subject was p-adic groups. I was only a part time student at the time and it took 4 years to complete my MSc. Then I became a full time PhD student, my new advisor was Prof. Ron Livne, and I studied number theory, modular forms and quaternion algebras. After a while I managed to do some original work in the field, though not what was planned. However, I became increasingly frustrated with my inability to write down the results. After 5 years and with no end in sight I stopped my studies and left the university. I got married, found a job in the biotech sector and eventually became what is now known as a data scientist. For a while I tried to continue working on a thesis but gradually stopped. Mathematics became more of a hobby which I come back to from time to time.
What will I write about?
My plan is to write mainly about two general topics. The first is my experience as a math student, observations and conclusions regarding math, the university, in general and in relation to me. The second is my work, what I learned, what I tried to do, what were my plans and what is not finished. This may be more technical, though I will not publish research papers here.
Who is it for?
First of all, myself. I tend to forget many things, more as time goes by. I will enjoy reading this after I forget that I wrote it.
I hope my family and people who know me will find the personal material interesting. These are subjects I rarely talk about to anyone but are an important part of me. The more math oriented material may be of interest to people who were in similar situations and faced similar dilemmas as university students and assistants.
Why am I writing? Why now?
Somehow my math connection stays with me, and I feel that if I write about it I will be able to let it go, and/or I will find a way to get back to what I started and perhaps do a better job this time.
As to the timing, I can't say for sure. Perhaps it is the Covid pandemic that we are facing for over a year. Perhaps the fact that my father died in the past year, as well as two people my age who were my friends many years ago. Ever since I left the university there is an inner voice that tells me I should publish my work, since that's the way science progresses. I haven't been able to do it, to my frustration and shame. Now I hear a second voice saying that I need to share other things about my university experience, non-technical stuff. When I thought about it I had many ideas and topics I could write about, things I kept inside for many years.
I've been blogging about the TCEC chess engine tournament for a few years now, and I'm comfortable with this platform. So, I think I'll give it a try and see if I can keep it going. It won't be easy, but at least I'll have an open channel for whenever my math urge returns.
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