31.1 Books(Revised25 1)

book reviews within networks of “exchange relationships, where — much like any object — the disease Science in culture concept and illness experience acquire value and [can] leverage resources, money or social The sum of the parts concessions”. As spin and values of the mean- Proof, a play by David Auburn ings of illness are speculated, negotiated and Jonathan Knight traded upon, so too do sufferers’ and scholars’ Sophie Germain, daughter of an eighteenth- fortunes rise and fall. One of the great advan- century Parisian merchant, became fascinated by tages of Wailoo’s approach is the way it reveals mathematics at an early age, much to the chagrin how social institutions and forces of political of her parents, who thought such concerns were economy — more than the triumphant not proper for a young woman. She studied in achievements of famous autonomous schol- secret, late into the night, burning a hidden ars — shape scientific inquiry and meanings supply of candles. Even after her parents came of illness. Hill–Burton grants, in terms of the to accept her strange proclivity, she knew the US Public Health Service Act passed in 1946, outside world would not. So when she struck up have stimulated hospital construction and a correspondence with the great mathematician certain kinds of medical research; philan- Carl Gauss, she used a man’s name. thropic trends forge particular representa- She wrote to him of how she had devised a tions of illness; Medicare and Medicaid alter special kind of prime number and used it to incentives to serve the sick poor; black power make a start at proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, politics shifts cultural representations of black the famous mathematical teaser that had by then pain; managed care and free-market disci- been around for 130 years. Later, when Gauss plines within medical markets depreciate the found out that the author was a woman, he ‘capital’ — fiscal and symbolic — of academic wrote to her that, as a member of the sex that centres. The author shows how social forces “must encounter infinitely more difficulties than find their way “beneath the skin”, into the very men to familiarise herself with these thorny marrow of sickle-cell sufferers, transforming researches”, she must have extraordinary talents. Father and daughter, mathematicians both. options, experiences and outcomes of care. Such stories make irresistible fodder for the The text also tells how ideologies come to dramatic artist. In David Auburn’s Proof, creativity peaks around 23 and it’s all downhill life. Sometimes those lives — like that of which began its national tour in the United from there,” Hal tells Catherine. He says many of CHRIS BENNION Frankenstein’s monster — are absolutely States in November, the present-day protagonist the older guys use amphetamines to try to stay wretched. For example, the disfiguring Catherine foreshadows her own mathematical sharp, and he assumes that he will never amount power of white racism on medico-scientific talent by telling the story of Germain. Catherine to much as he is already 28. discourse is deftly documented by citing a is also forced to be reclusive, not because of In a public interview with Auburn at the physician, writing in 1932: “The safeguard- her sex, but to care for her ageing, schizophrenic San Francisco theatre where the tour opened, ing of the health of the Negro …[was] any- father Robert, a mathematician who revolu- host Bob Osserman, a mathematician at the thing but an easy task, for the fight is not tionized three areas of mathematics before he Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in against disease, but against physical, mental, “went bughouse”. Berkeley, said he basically agreed with that and moral inferiority, against ignorance and Although Robert is mentally ill, he is not portrayal. Although pill-popping is probably not superstition, against poverty and filth.” mad in the fiendish and clinically undefined rampant, as the play suggests, mathematicians do The tale is populated by many public sense of Dr Frankenstein or Dr Moreau, or even worry about losing their edge, he said. And this figures of mythic proportions, but no true of Seth Brundle in The Fly. Robert develops is unfortunate because, whether justified or not, heroes. Even prominent black social scien- schizophrenia at the age of 25, and the disease that fear diminishes the importance of doing tists of the age were transfixed by cursed halts his career. good, solid, non-breakthrough mathematics. ideologies of white superiority. Wailoo Hal, Catherine’s love interest and her father’s “The idea that only brilliant research counts is cites sociologist Charles Johnson (1934): former student, now a professor at the University very destructive,” Osserman said. “Children die in great numbers and of Chicago, discovers another brilliant mathema- Where Proof goes beyond the realm of reality mothers accept their death with a dull and tical proof locked in Robert’s desk drawer. The is in asking us to believe in Catherine’s amazing uninquiring fatalism.” Thus, the spectre of question is, who wrote it, Catherine or Robert? mathematical insight. It’s true that in maths, but the mentally inferior, fatalistic, apathetic and Auburn set out to portray mathematicians rarely in other scientific disciplines, great strides mistrustful black patient whose afflictions and their work as realistically as possible. By con- can be solo acts. But not even Germain achieved are consequences of her flaws — alive even to sulting real mathematicians, he avoided some of what Catherine says she achieves, a brilliant this day in emerging medical literatures on the more hackneyed stereotypes of scientists, and mathematical proof written in a few months of ‘cultural competence’ — has a lineage as long enriched the play with aspects of the culture of late nights with no more background than a and shameful as the shadow of the plantation. mathematics that outsiders might not know. Yet, genius father and a semester of college. The author blows the dust off the many unlike the plays of Carl Djerassi, Proof does not Nevertheless, Auburn uses mathematics skeletons in the nation’s closet. The ghosts of attempt to educate. For Auburn, mathematics is as an effective dramatic tool that leaves the inequalities past, present and future rattle a theatrical tool, and he uses it with great skill. audience on the edge of its seat, hoping their chains and point to trouble here, Proof gives us a look inside the culture of desperately that Catherine wrote the proof. behind and ahead of us. Thankfully, finally, mathematics when Hal tells Catherine it’s a The truth is not revealed until the final scene. I we have, in historian Wailoo, a post-modern “young man’s game”. Although the general Jonathan Knight writes for Nature from Indiana Jones whose rough-and-tumble public may know that maths, like physics and San Francisco. vitality of practice and piercing gaze allow no the other ‘hard’ sciences, is a field still dominated place for those old bones to hide. I by men, they may not know that many math- Proof is playing at the Boston Wilbur Theatre Ken Fox is in the Division of General Pediatrics, ematicians worry that their best years are quickly until 17 February. The tour reaches the Denver Boston University School of Medicine, 91 East behind them. “There’s this fear that your Auditorium Theatre on 18 June. Concord, Boston, Massachusetts 02118, USA.