A lesson from a puppy that dared

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A lesson from a puppy that dared

Published: 07 Aug. 2025, 00:06

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Lee Woo Young

The author is an HCMC distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

He burst into the lecture hall, breathless and late. Professor Jerzy Neyman’s statistics class was already in full swing. On one side of the blackboard, two problems were written. Assuming they were homework, he quickly copied them into his notebook.

At home, he struggled to solve the questions, which seemed far more difficult than usual. After several days of effort, he managed to solve both and submitted them to Professor Neyman.

The late mathematician George Bernard Dantzig [STANFORD UNIVERSITY]

Some time later, he awoke to a knock on his front door. There stood Neyman, visibly excited. “You solved two famous unsolved problems in statistics!” he exclaimed. The problems on the blackboard had not been homework but open mathematical challenges that Neyman had introduced to his students.

The late student was George Dantzig (1914–2005), later hailed as the father of linear programming. His accidental achievement became one of the most celebrated anecdotes in the history of modern mathematics.

I once had a similar, though less triumphant, experience while visiting a university in the United States. A professor there handed me a problem, suggesting I try it for a week. Back home, I locked myself in a room and wrestled with it, but a week passed without progress.

The professor’s casual “one week” lingered in my mind. Driven by curiosity, I kept at it for a month. Eventually, I admitted defeat and returned to him, dejected. With a gentle smile, he revealed the truth. “That problem is a variation of the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the greatest unsolved problems of the 20th century. If you had solved it, your name would be in history.” At that moment, I felt my strength leave me.

Both Dantzig and I were like naïve puppies unaware of the tigers we faced. The difference was that Dantzig caught his tiger, while I was caught by mine. History is a place where exhilaration and disappointment coexist.

Every day, countless such “puppies” wander into uncharted intellectual territories. The back alleys of history are crowded with their attempts. Many call it a land of sorrow, yet these wanderers feel an indescribable catharsis there. Failure itself is not a tragedy. The beauty lies in the challenge.

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.