Dear Ronnie This is what stuck with me from the e-mail
One aim of mathematics is understanding, making difficult things easy, seeing why something is true. Thus improved exposition is an important part of the progress of mathematics (even if this is ignored by Research Assessment Exercises).
Indeed they don't teach you this at the university, but somehow i always knew it. It was obvious from the start, then i had to resist everyone trying to tell me otherwise. I am glad that there are other who see this as well.
Grothendieck wrote to me in 1982: `The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps ...'.
I like this quote since i like structuralizing mathematics. Something to think about if you want to take the next step. Fill in the void with a precise mathematical void. Best regards Rafael Borowiecki [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]