The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 90

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Bradd Hart
series of lectures. When the proof fell apart, he had to cancel,
but he promised that he would come the following year. By
then, of course, the proof had been corrected, and Wiles was in
tremendous demand as a speaker. Nevertheless, he was good
to his word and came to Fields.
After I came to Fields as Deputy Director, one of the first
big events we had to organize was a visit to the Institute
by King Carl Gustav of Sweden! Apparently, under the
royal auspices, the Swedes regularly organize visits to other
countries to see what they are doing in the arts, sciences,
technology, and so on. I remember Peter Sutherland, Dean
of Science at McMaster, offering the advice that I should buy
a tie if I was going to meet the King since he was sure I
didn’t own one. As we really had no idea of what exactly the
Swedish delegation would like to hear, Don Dawson, Arvind
Gupta, Ben Schwartz and I stayed up half the night preparing
slides for Don to present. I think I got about four hours sleep.
In the morning the King and his entourage arrived, and the
presentation went quite well. The Swedes looked just as tired
as we did though, and it turned out that they had partied
the previous night with the Swedish members of the Toronto
Maple Leafs hockey team.
Two big events that were organized while I was at Fields
were the Legacy of Fields Symposium (2000) and the Tenth
Anniversary event (2002). Here are personal highlights. There
was a panel discussion with many luminaries on the future of
mathematics. As the panel was seated, Michael Atiyah was on
the extreme right while Tim Gowers, then newly minted as a
Fields Medallist and the young guy on the block, was on the
extreme left. Panellists were asked in turn about their views.
Atiyah began, and summarized his thoughts that physics
would continue to have a profound effect on mathematics.
After he said this, each speaker in turn roughly echoed these
remarks. When it got to Gowers, he said something on