A story from Rota's classic Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught: I remembered an MIT colloquium that took place in the late fifties; it was one of the first I

A story from Rota's classic Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught: I remembered an MIT colloquium that took place in the late fifties; it was one of the first I attended at MIT. The speaker was Eugenio Calabi. Sitting in the front row of the audience were Norbert Wiener, asleep as usual until the time came to applaud, and Dirk Struik, who had been one of Calabi’s teachers when Calabi was an under-graduate at MIT in the forties. The subject of the lecture was beyond my competence. After the first five minutes I was completely lost. At the end of the lecture an arcane dialogue took place between the speaker and some members of the audience—Ambrose and Singer if I remember correctly. There followed a period of tense silence. Professor Struik broke the ice. He raised his hand and said, “Give us something to take home!” Calabi obliged, and in the next five minutes he explained in beautiful simple terms the gist of his lecture. Everybody filed out with a feeling of satisfaction. https://www.ams.org/notices/199701/comm-rota.pdf https://www.ams.org/notices/199701/comm-rota.pdf