The Sweet Charm Of Sin 1987 Ok.ru
Hadi Sapre
I learned from Jerry how to treat my PhD students. He was generous above all. After spending lots of time reading his beautiful papers on surgery and knot theory, I decided to work on a problem in singularity theory given to me by Dennis Sullivan. Jerry was OK with that. He encouraged me to go my own way, and his support and gentle criticism were essential to my success.
Jerry was an exact contemporary of mine, and we shared many common mathematical interests. Although I have not had personal contact with him for probably two decades, I remember him vividly as a sweet and gentle person, with a deep engagement with mathematics.
We were among the generation of topologists which managed to exploit powerful methods developed by John Milnor and C.T.C. Wall to attack previously inaccessible problems in high dimensional geometric topology. Jerry was preeminent among us in developing high dimensional knot theory.
While I interacted with him only for brief periods, I learned a lot from personal discussions with him, and from studying his work. He enriched the mathematical life of many others as well, and for this he will be remembered with great fondness and respect.
The distinguished American topologist Jerry Levine died on 8th April, 2006. He was a student of Norman Steenrod at Princeton University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1961. Following appointments at MIT and Berkeley, from 1966 on he was at Brandeis University. In the 1960's and 1970's he was one of the pioneers of the surgery method of the classification of high-dimensional manifolds, their automorphisms and their embeddings, particularly of spheres and projective spaces. The classification of highly-connected high-dimensional codimension 2 knots and the computation of the cobordism groups of high-dimensional codimension 2 knots were particular highlights; he spoke at the 1970 Nice ICM on "The role of the Seifert matrix in knot theory". More recently, he made important contributions to the algebraic and geometric topology of low-dimensional knots and links. Professor Levine was a frequent visitor to the United Kingdom, spending the academic year 1963-64 in Cambridge, and 1972-1973 in Oxford. He had been invited to visit Durham, Edinburgh and Warwick in the current academic year on a Scheme 2 visit of the Society, but his terminal illness prevented him from taking up the invitation.
I particularly appreciated the help and support offered by Jerry to my late student Des Sheiham. Indeed, Des's Ph.d. on the computation of the high-dimensional boundary link cobordism group solved one of the problems posed by Jerry and Kent Orr in their survey of knots and links in the Wall 60th birthday volumes. I last met Jerry at the 2004 BIRS meeting on knot theory where he was usual wonderfully lowkey but influential self.
I met Jerry in 1977-8 when he visited Geneva where I was a student. He shared an office with Vaughan Jones opposite mine and was lecturing on higher dimensional knot theory in our 3'ieme cycle. I wasn't aware at the time, but our interests (and physical contact) in math would cross each other in many ways over the following years. I lectured twice in his topology seminar at Brandeis, once during my 83-85 assistant professorship at Yale, and later during my year 96-97 of research with the CNRS. My last physical contact was at UCSD in 2000. Of the mathematicians with whom I ran in contact over the years, Jerry is among those who were closest.
I do not know how to express my sadness with Professor Levine's death. He was one of my heroes in mathematics. Since I started studying knot theory, his papers have been my favorite textbooks, and like many other knot theorists, my results could not have been obtained without his work. Visiting Brandeis and talking with him in person was one of my greatest memories from visiting the U.S. He was always very nice and supportive of me and I could feel kindness and warmth whenever I saw him.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, Jerry Levine's student. Thus began, in a feeble attempt at humor, my short tribute to Jerry at his 60th birthday conference banquet in Tel Aviv, Israel. Countless times I've been asked if I was Jerry's student. Ironically, upon arriving in Tel Aviv the day before, Michael Farber asked over dinner, "You were Jerry's student, weren't you Kent?"
For the record, and with much gratitude, I acknowledge Julius L. Shaneson for that important role in my life. Yet as I ponder Jerry's far-reaching influence on knot theory, and on me, I realize that I might have asked the same question of Michael - or of Cameron Gordon, or Tim Cochran, or Jonathan Hillman, or Stavros Garoufalidas, or De Witt Sumners, or Xiao-Song Lin, or Nathan Habegger, or Pat Gilmer, or Cherry Kearton, or of many others who have been so influenced by Jerry's striking breakthroughs in knot theory that the above question seems entirely reasonable. Jerry set the stage for all of us, and I do not hesitate to state my conviction that he is knot theory's most fundamental and profound influence.
Jerry founded a new era of knot theory during the 1960's, and at each new direction since, he leaped into the field making significant contributions. At the end of his career, Jerry's contributions were still fresh and modern, still deep and penetrating. At age 68, cruel illness cut short Jerry's career and cheated mathematics of his enormous insight and talent.
My respect for Jerry increased steadily with the length of time I knew him. He was a good teacher, a great thesis advisor, and an outstanding colleague. It took me a long time to understand the depth of his sense of humor and humanity. His generosity and gentleness, however, were obvious from the moment I met him.
The road trips to the Cornell Topology Festival stand out in my mind. Typically it involved Jerry deftly moderating the conversations of three obnoxious graduate students, and by the end of those road trips we always knew much more than when we started. More topology usually, but also more about the world, as happened one year when we tuned the radio to the Iran-Contra hearings for most of the trip.
Oh, and running into Jerry and Sandy in the middle of a crosswalk in downtown Seattle at 10 pm one night 5 years ago provided me with the most striking coincidence of my life, and gives me an story I'll be able to use for a long time.
The sad news of Jerry's passing brought my memory back to 20 years ago, in 1986, when I was reading Jerry's paper "An approach to homotopy classification of links" (published in 1988 in Trans. AMS). It was this paper which gave me the inspiration to complete the homotopy classification of links with Nathan Habegger.
In March of 1988, with my family, I drove from Princeton to Boston to visit Jerry. Jerry arranged a joint topology seminar of Brandeis and MIT for me. In Brandeis, I met two of Jerry's students, Gyo Taek Jin and Paul Kirk for the first time. We were all new Ph.D.'s then. What a nice trip! A lot of memories.
The first word which comes to my mind when I think of Jerry is 'generosity'. Jerry was extremely generous, especially with his time. As his student I would easily talk for two hours a week with him, and this often right after talking to another student for two hours. How he managed to find the time and energy for this is a mystery to me. I hope that if I ever have students I will remember his generosity and pass it on to my students.
In my meetings with him and in his courses he frequently showed his wit and very dry humour. It took me often a few seconds that Jerry had just cracked a great joke. I am sure Jerry would have been a great poker player since he rarely showed what he was thinking. Only when Jerry was really surprised he would slightly raise his eyebrow, which could then mean anything from `well--done!' to `hmmm, I didn't expect such a mistake'.
As I said, Jerry was very generous with his time and I met him often even after I graduated. I spent several weeks in June 2005 at Brandeis and met him about twice a week. Just before our last meeting I got an email from Jerry saying that he had to cancel the meeting because he didn't feel well. I never saw him again.
I fondly remember a visit to Brandeis with my family when I was at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1974, and the terrific party Sandy and Jerry gave for us at 39 Dexter Road. Sandy and Jerry were great hosts, and my wife Neddy and I enjoyed hosting them on two visits they made over the years to Tallahassee. Jerry, we will miss you!
I will remember Jerry as a very good friend, always kind and helpful and very inspiring to talk to. After he received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Prize in 1989 Jerry was repeatedly a guest of honor at Siegen University. His presence never failed to attract the world elite in knot theory and to create an enormously fruitful and enthusiastic scientific atmosphere.
Jerry has been a mentor, collaborator, and longtime friend during the beginning of my career in Boston. I have very fond memories of him explaining to me topology and geometry, in our frequent meetings in his office at Brandeis. He was very accessible, and would always listen and explain the many things I did not know of. During the six years of my stay in Boston, I would meet with Jerry regularly, twice a week, to discuss mathematics, month after month. Little by little, I became familiar with the breadth and wealth of his research: from surgery theory, to high dimensional knot theory, to low dimensional topology, to problems in slice knots and links.
We would often chat about things, history, politics and people. I have good memory for his sharp sense of humor. I traveled with Jerry to numerous conferences, and visited Israel, Japan, and Korea among other places.
We first met Jerry when he and Sandy became our next door neighbours, albeit, for a short period, in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, U.K. But an instant friendship was formed which has lasted for over forty years.
I was devastated by the sad news about Jerry's death. Before 1987 I lived in the Soviet Union and knew only Jerry's papers. I admired Jerry's mathematics and thought of him as of God: his papers were so beautiful and perfect, his style was so elegant and precise.
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