Gilbert Strang, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at MIT, the unassuming champion of linear algebra who taught for over six decades, wholeheartedly endorsed the 2002 MIT OpenCourseWare initiative and made his full course accessible to one and all across the globe. And this is not some mundane mathematical material stuffed with intimidating definitions, theorems, and proofs, we have here a rich reservoir of concrete examples that hone the intuitive and articulatory abilities of students across all age groups, as also professors, bootcamp instructors, and self-taught engineers.
Given that a lot rests on strong foundations of linear algebra - neural networks rely on matrix multiplications to pass data through layers, machine learning models use vectors to represent data points and features, eigenvalues and eigenvectors power dimensionality reduction techniques like PCA, and singular Value Decomposition is used in recommendation systems, image compression, and natural language processing – one can imagine the worldwide impact of Prof. Strang’s pedagogical generosity.
Prof. Strang has long called it a day, but not before throwing open the treasure trove of his lectures for the benefit of anyone and everyone, whether students and veterans of AI, data science, and software engineering or even enthusiasts keen to take a peek into the fascinating world of linear algebra.
I was in Chicago a week back and wished to meet him for a thought leader story on his exemplary voyage of selfless mathematics, as also issues close to his heart and mind beyond the MIT stint.
This was his reply:
Dear Sudhiir, I am fully retired now at age 91 Your questions are good but I think I am now too old for this Thank you for asking so politely Best wishes in all your work Gilbert Strang Needless to say, I didn’t bother him for the tete-a-tete but did convey my disagreement on his statement of being too old. Beyond doubt, he is younger than most young people, such is the timeless energy and eternal impact of his life work.