You studied mathematics and music. How do you feel about that?
Thinking about it reminded me of a poem by Heinrich Heine:
That makes people happy,
That makes a man dull,
When he has three very beautiful lovers
And has only two legs.
One I run after in the morning,
After the other in the evening;
The third comes to me at noon
Well under my own roof.
Farewell, you three lovers,
I have only two legs,
I want to be in rural silence
Enjoy the beautiful nature.
I read this poem on the subway.
It talks about three lovers. Who is your third lover, besides mathematics and music?
I don't want to be that precise. But the poem does say that you have to free yourself from constraints for your own development. For me, it's the idea of being able to continue making music professionally after my music degree.
So you have a degree in music?
I am a B-level church musician. The degree is a Bachelor's degree with a standard study period of 8 semesters. I play the organ.
Are the mathematics and church music Bachelor's degree courses comparable?
It's difficult to compare studying mathematics and music. I had to push my mental limits a lot more when I was studying music. But maybe that's also because I only started studying math at 25 and was already more experienced. The average level of music students is much higher. But that's because of the tough entrance exams in music. If you pass the entrance exam (and are then accepted), you don't fail any further exams (at least that's how I know it). You are almost only taught individually, which costs the state a lot of money. The church music courses (there are Bachelor's and Master's degrees) are among the most expensive. However, the number of students is correspondingly low.
What was the double degree course like for you?
I only did the bare minimum. In one semester, for example, I combined Analysis 3 and a proseminar in mathematics with the preparation for my final concert. The concert took place in the concert hall at the conservatory, where I always practiced at night before my lessons. Two hours before dawn, I went to sleep on couches in the corridor in front of the singing rooms. The night watchmen often woke me up. But one of them was nice. Whenever he saw me, he put his finger in front of his mouth, said "...shh..." and turned out the light again.
How did you get into mathematics?
My grandparents were university lecturers in Romania, my grandpa a physicist, my grandma a mathematician. I actually call them Bunicu and Buni, but here Grandpa and Grandma. In my youth and early adulthood, I was more interested in music. I never thought about studying mathematics. I got closer to it through a fellow student who studied music and mathematics. However, I only came to mathematics when I was 25, during a personal crisis. I was lucky, and I'm grateful for that. I like to attribute that to my grandparents.
You have been doing your doctorate at the ISA - Institute for Stochastics and Applications since April 2023. Tell us about your topic.
I'm doing research in the field of extreme value theory. Roughly speaking, it's about using data to draw conclusions about extreme events that have never or only very rarely been observed. In this area, I work with time series. You can imagine that extreme events, when they occur, have a lingering effect. For example, a heatwave does not consist of just one hot day. We call this extremal dependence and investigate critical values at which the strength of the dependence becomes a problem (mathematically).
What excites you about mathematics?
The symbols and signs. I perceive them in shades of color. For example, alpha is yellow, epsilon is red and xi is pink.
Thank you for the interview.
Ioan Scheffel M.Sc., B.Mus.(HMDK Stuttgart)
Institute for Stochastics and Applications
Computational Statistics