Grand Mathematician (cont.)

While posting my testimony on God's revelations in mathematics below, I am reminded to two other stories:

1. Charles Townes, Nobel prize-winning physicist who discovered maser and laser. He is also very well-known as a Christian speaker. He is the recipient of the Templeton Prize in 2005. Townes claims that a moment of revelation, rather than inspiration, gave him the idea of the maser (which later led to the invention of the laser) while he was walking in a park one day. See the following interview by UC Berkeley News (Jun 2005): http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtml

2. Recently, I was working on a problem in my Math 127 class. I needed to find some variants of a certain statistical model. I could not get any headway for 1-2 days, and I asked God if He had any ideas. As usual, He gives me a little chuckle! A few hours later, I had an idea to try the Fourier transformations described in class. At first, the transformations looked really clumsy, and the new Fourier coordinates did not factor nicely into one term. So I gave up. A few hours later with no success, while in the bathroom, I decided to try the Fourier idea again. And this time, everything worked out nicely! I told him that the idea did not come like a clear revelation as it did in Budapest, so I don't know if it was really from him or from myself. He told me that He doesn't really care if I choose to attribute the idea to Him or not: it was my own choice. I said I really want to give Him the praise even when I do not understand how He helped me, so I did.

When the homeworked was returned to us, God reminded me of how the professor in the Budapest class had remarked how His solutions were good. He joked that perhaps my professor would also comment on the Fourier solution. I laughed back. And surprisingly, my professor did talk about the Fourier solution in class!