A story told by George Dantzig while a professor at Stanford University:
“I was a mathematics graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Arriving late to class as usual, I quickly copied two math problems from the blackboard assuming they were3 the homework assignment. When I sat down to work on them that evening, I found them to be the most difficult problems my professor ever assigned. Night after night I worked, trying to solve one then the other with no success. But I kept at it.
“Several days later, I made a breakthrough and solved both problems. I took the homework to class the next day. The professor told me to leave it on his desk. It was piled so high with papers I was concerned my homework would get lost in the clutter. Reluctantly, I dropped it off and went on my way.
“Six weeks later, on a Sunday morning, I was awakened by a pounding on the door. I was startled to see it was my professor. ‘George! George!’ He was shouting, ‘You solved them!’
“‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t I supposed to?’ The professor explained that the two problems on the blackboard were not homework; they were two famous outstanding problems that leading mathematicians so far had not been able to solve. He could hardly believe that in only a few days, I had solved them both.
“If someone had told me that they were two famous unsolved problems, I probably wouldn’t even have tried to solve them. It goes to show the power of positive thinking.”
How true! And what an amazing story! We all have unsolved problems in our life, don’t we? Thorny problems that seem to elude us? Ldet’s take a few tips from George: Let’s assume they’re solvable, let’s keep at them, and let’s do it with a dose of can-do power. As my great friend and mentor Dr. Rob Gilbert* says, “Don’t get frustrated, get fascinated!”
That’s exactly what George did: He got fascinated and kept at it. Let’s do the same as we all write on!
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