Letter to Family                                 

                                Ramanujan, Fiona Hill and Trump Impeachment                                                        

Hello, dear Everybody,

Sunday evening, I began watching The Man Who Knew Infinity.  After 40 mins. I knew that I could not bear to reach the denouement.  Monday evening, Mum and I watched it together.  No doubt all of you maths and physics graduates know the theme and so rather than me elaborate, it's better recounted here: https://inference-review.com/article/touched-by-the-goddess  

I first "met" Ramanujan in 1961 when C.P. Snow was installed as University Rector at St. Andrews.  The four ancient Scottish universities, St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, have the unique privilege of a Rector, who is elected by the students to represent their interests on the University Court, of which he is Chair.  Previous Rectors include John Stuart Mill, J.M. Barrie, Haig, Carnegie, Kipling, Nansen, Grenfell and Smuts, and more recently Katharine Whitehorn, Nicolas Parsons, John Cleese and Andrew Neil.  Currently it is Leyla Hussein.  Snow was elected on his platform of the Two Cultures and his recently published book The Masters, of which the current three year dispute at Christ Church between the Dean and the Governing Body is but a real-life replication.  Snow's Rectorial Address was On Magnanimity, which took its title from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.  Snow modelled his theme on the unparalleled originality of the co-operation between G.H. Hardy, J. Littlewood and S. Ramanujan at Cambridge in the early years of the 20th century. In it I caught the snippet of brilliance in Ramanujan's response to Hardy who found the number 1729 of the taxi in which he arrived dull. "Not at all, Hardy.  It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."  Hardy's final tribute to Ramanujan is moving. "When I find myself forced to listen to tiresome and pompous people, I say to myself,  'Well, I have done something you could never have done. I have collaborated with Littlewood and Ramanujan on almost equal terms.'"

Last evening was another evening of privilege. Ming Campbell was in conversation with Fiona Hill.  He is the Chancellor of the University and each year there are two gatherings of the Chancellor's Circle, a group who have pledged a legacy.  One takes place in the mediaeval Parliament Hall, St. Andrews, which dates back to before the Union and the other at the Caledonian Club in London.  Recently they have been held by Zoom, as was this one.  When we first attended there were perhaps 50,  last night there were 800.  Lord Campbell is the former local MP and leader of the LibDems.  Fiona Hill has been the adviser to three US Presidents and she came to prominence when she gave courageous testimony at the first Donald Trump impeachment.  She is a St. Andrews graduate and she came from Bishop Auckland, where Mum and I grew up.  Her father was a miner, out of work at a time when heavy industry had closed down:  coal-mines, ironworks, steel, railways and shipyards. He said to her, "There is no opportunity for you here, pet," which is the first part of the title of her new book, the second part being, "Opportunities in the 20th century."  And so she went to St. Andrews in the 1980's.  After reading Russian and Political History, she won a scholarship to Moscow University and from there to Harvard.  She described how she created her opportunities and how they were created for her.  Firstly, it was by securing the backing of the local M.P., Derek Forster.  Making her field international security, she rose to become top Russian expert to three Presidents.  It was her responsibility to prime Trump for his meeting with Putin in Helsinki.  She said that he never read the papers she gave him.  He expected to run the country in the way he ran the family business with no need for checks and balances.  The account she gave of life in the White House under Trump was mind-blowing.  The turn-over of staff was such that she hardly got to meet some of the members of the administration she was supposed to be working with.  Conspiracy theories, powered by the press, set faction against faction. She made it clear that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election and that it was their ongoing purpose to use very opportunity to destabilise western democracies and for that we were as much to blame ourselves for the opportunities we give them.   She spoke in the overtones of the soft Bishop Auckland accent.  Every word was clear and straightforward and very sentence drew examples from current political life from China, Russia, the UK, the USA, the EU and elsewhere.  At one point, Ming Campbell wanted to take charge of an issue and sign off.  She was having none of it.  She came back at him and he responded that he would have to read her book again.  It was compelling.  From asides, she said that she was "disappointed" that the UK Government had gone back on its promise to extend HS2 to the north east.  "It's one thing for me, when I have a personal incentive visiting my mother in Bishop Auckland, but how much of an incentive is it for a business man to make it up to Hartlepool?"  A photo showed her sitting next to John Bolton round the table with Putin and Trump. After the impeachment, she takes it as a badge of honour that Trump described her as a Deep State Stiff with a nice accent.

I've no doubt that the Development Director chairing the event saw it as a triumph, glowing from the news that St. Andrews was the first university to displace Oxford and Cambridge from top of the Sunday Times League Table. The recording is available on:  Chancellor's Circle: The Chancellor Meets Fiona Hill - YouTube             

Dad, Grandad, Peter