The Jonah Family and Friends

Excitement, Fear. Not writing cost me professionally and economically.

Most of my published papers were written with a coauthor I felt comfortable with. Once our paper was published, we did not write a paper on the same subject.

My first try at a PhD thesis did not go well. To get a fellowship for the summer, my adviser proposed a subject that I didn’t understand. Nothing clicked. That summer my folks lost their house. My new wife and I rushed home to help them move. At the end of the summer, my adviser accepted a position at Yale. He did not take me along. My replacement adviser could not understand the subject, but felt that it was a good subject. The next school year was my last at Brown.

I accepted a three year appointment as an instructor at Tufts in Boston. The third year, George Leger joined the department. We liked each other. George’s thesis was On Cohomology Theory for Lie Algebras. George suggested that I write on the Cohomology of Groups. I countered with The Colomology of Cogroups.