Posted on 25th September 2026
A long gap on writing here. In March 2026 I developed a Pneumococcal infection which lead to being hospitalised for 3 weeks with Bacterial Meningitis amongst other things. I was off work until recently.
I was supported by a huge number of doctors, nurses, and other people working in the NHS. I can't thank them enough. Since returning to work, my employer, and especially the pure maths section and colleagues, have been very understanding.
I dithered over whether to write more about this experience of a life-threatening illness. At least in my experience, in the UK, we don't really talk about such things. I think our society would be better if we discussed such things openly; I also worried that I'd come across as weird if I did write more. So I haven't. Except, I think our profession would be better if we treated each other more as humans, and less as theorem-producing machines.
Which, of course, brings me to a second "break". I paid no attention to anything happening externally during the 3 weeks I was in hospital, and then took the somewhat deliberate decision to not engage with news, social media etc. once I was home. (I'm pretty "offline" anyway. I just listened to the BBC radio news for a few months, instead of reading a news website etc.) I didn't engage with Mathematics except a little to keep my mind active (and to check I could still do abstract maths: thankfully nothing much seems to have changed there.)
I was hence rather late to learn about what was happening over the summer. This lead to a pretty surreal week where it rather felt like reality had changed. I went back to work and there was one and only one topic of conversation. I'm somewhat doom scrolling Proofs and Prompts and Terence Tao's blog. One blog I like is Michael Harris's (to get a sense of the pace of change, read the "about" page...)
Again, I have nothing profound to add. A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. A data-centre doesn't run on coffee. Neither do I anymore: more than one cup and I feel pretty unwell...