Thoughts on Research

There is much wisdom in what this author’s best academic friend, Professor V. Lakshmikantham, says on the subject of research: do it! Some researchers rely on the serendipity of science, others on sharpening their tools and reading the work of others leaving no time to think and ending up nowhere. Perhaps, this author’s experience can offer some insights.

His academic career was interrupted 15 years straight during the political turmoil in the Philippines capped by the imposition of martial law by President Ferdinand Marcos, 1972 – 1986. The situation was the least this researcher needed at the time especially when he found himself not really in immediate danger but in a wide field in the general direction of the business end of the barrel of the gun. He left for the United States in 1971 and found a new imperative: build a support movement for the end of martial rule during which time he shelved his mathematical career completely.

When people’s power ousted President Marcos in 1986 the author returned to the Philippines but faced a daunting challenge: he found himself at ground level while his international colleagues were up on the fifteenth floor of the Tower of Academe. Retracing their steps would have been impossible and historical precedence was not in his favor either. The closest to his experience was Bertrand Russell’s when he was removed from his post as professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, England, for his pacifist activity during the First World War. When he got his post back 26 years later through the effort of British mathematician Paul Hardy, he went around mathematics and remained a philosopher.....