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PROFESSOR: Well, I think--

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I don't know if it was in
the womb or shortly after,

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but it was very--

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I can't remember ever not being
interested in mathematics.

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Having said that,
you know, growing up,

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I was pretty convinced I was
going to be an astrophysicist

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or exploring strange new
worlds and other-- boldly going

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where no one dared to go.

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I certainly didn't
envision myself being happy

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as a clam just hunkering down
in a research institution

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and thinking about math.

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I'd say what got me more
interested, as time went on,

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was just the realization--

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I think that there is--

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in some sense, that there's an
unknown world out there just

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waiting to be discovered, and
I think a lot of-- it's easy--

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I felt this growing up,
and I think a lot of kids

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have this feeling that sort of
like all the good discoveries

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have been made.

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You know, there's no
unknown regions on earth.

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There's no deepest,
darkest place

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you can go to explore that
no one's ever been to.

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Every mountain's been climbed.

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You have sort of the sense
that the world is known.

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The state of knowledge is
known, but in mathematics

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that's totally untrue.

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There's tons of
problems out there

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that no one's even touched,
and there's new problems

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being discovered every day.

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So you never run out
of space to explore.