Those days I was still harbouring a desire to become a mathematician. The discipline and dedication required to become one was sorely lacking. That was when I read the book In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery. I then wished I had read this book 10 years ago.

In Code is an autobiography of a 16 year old girl who went on to win The European Young Scientist Of The Year award in 1999 for her work on cryptography using what is called the Cayley-Purser algorithm. The autobiography is her mathematical journey to fame. Very well written and reads like a novel with an unexpected twist at the end (the algorithm was broken after all.)

In my experience such people shine for a while before disappearing among the unknown millions. I tucked away "follow Sarah Flannery" in my mental checklist. This was some 8 years ago. My children grew up. I gave them the book to read. They obviously liked it because even though my elder son, Arunabh, has read this book some time ago, he made a mention about In Code the other day.

Time to tick off the mental checklist.

So I googled for Sarah Flannery. Took about half an hour to sort out the details.

Turns out that she is now working as Chief Scientist in a company called Tirnua. Before this she worked as software engineer for Electronics Art. If you are a computer games fanatic, you must have heard of Need For Speed, The Sims - the most successful game of all times. Well, both these are EA products. Before that she worked for Wolfram Research, which is not surprising. Sarah loves, or used to love, working on Mathematica.

So she turned out to be a software engineer after all.

I hope this is not seen as passing judgment, but some part of me is a little disappointed. Reason: I dislike the trend in India that all engineers and scientists are ending up as software engineers. I think this is a tragedy for India. Long term growth of any country suffers when basic science and mathematics is neglected.

In any case, I am sure Sarah still loves doing mathematics and is involved in some mathematical pursuit. At least I hope so.
If you are a friend of Sarah or you are Sarah Flannery herself, please do drop a note confirming my hunch.

Sarah, here's wishing you lots of success in future.