The sum of the parts

Proof , a play by David Auburn

Sophie Germain, daughter of an eighteenth-century Parisian merchant, became fascinated by mathematics at an early age, much to the chagrin of her parents, who thought such concerns were not proper for a young woman. She studied in secret, late into the night, burning a hidden supply of candles. Even after her parents came to accept her strange proclivity, she knew the outside world would not. So when she struck up a correspondence with the great mathematician Carl Gauss, she used a man's name.

She wrote to him of how she had devised a special kind of prime number and used it to make a start at proving Fermat's Last Theorem, the famous mathematical teaser that had by then been around for 130 years. Later, when Gauss found out that the author was a woman, he wrote to her that, as a member of the sex that “must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarise herself with these thorny researches”, she must have extraordinary talents.

Father and daughter, mathematicians both. Credit: CHRIS BENNION

Such stories make irresistible fodder for the dramatic artist. In David Auburn's Proof, which began its national tour in the United States in November, the present-day protagonist Catherine foreshadows her own mathematical talent by telling the story of Germain. Catherine is also forced to be reclusive, not because of her sex, but to care for her ageing, schizophrenic father Robert, a mathematician who revolutionized three areas of mathematics before he “went bughouse”.

Although Robert is mentally ill, he is not mad in the fiendish and clinically undefined sense of Dr Frankenstein or Dr Moreau, or even of Seth Brundle in The Fly. Robert develops schizophrenia at the age of 25, and the disease halts his career.

Hal, Catherine's love interest and her father's former student, now a professor at the University of Chicago, discovers another brilliant mathematical proof locked in Robert's desk drawer. The question is, who wrote it, Catherine or Robert?

Auburn set out to portray mathematicians and their work as realistically as possible. By consulting real mathematicians, he avoided some of the more hackneyed stereotypes of scientists, and enriched the play with aspects of the culture of mathematics that outsiders might not know. Yet, unlike the plays of Carl Djerassi, Proof does not attempt to educate. For Auburn, mathematics is a theatrical tool, and he uses it with great skill.

Proof gives us a look inside the culture of mathematics when Hal tells Catherine it's a “young man's game”. Although the general public may know that maths, like physics and the other 'hard' sciences, is a field still dominated by men, they may not know that many mathematicians worry that their best years are quickly behind them. “There's this fear that your creativity peaks around 23 and it's all downhill from there,” Hal tells Catherine. He says many of the older guys use amphetamines to try to stay sharp, and he assumes that he will never amount to much as he is already 28.

In a public interview with Auburn at the San Francisco theatre where the tour opened, host Bob Osserman, a mathematician at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, said he basically agreed with that portrayal. Although pill-popping is probably not rampant, as the play suggests, mathematicians do worry about losing their edge, he said. And this is unfortunate because, whether justified or not, that fear diminishes the importance of doing good, solid, non-breakthrough mathematics. “The idea that only brilliant research counts is very destructive,” Osserman said.

Where Proof goes beyond the realm of reality is in asking us to believe in Catherine's amazing mathematical insight. It's true that in maths, but rarely in other scientific disciplines, great strides can be solo acts. But not even Germain achieved what Catherine says she achieves, a brilliant mathematical proof written in a few months of late nights with no more background than a genius father and a semester of college.

Nevertheless, Auburn uses mathematics as an effective dramatic tool that leaves the audience on the edge of its seat, hoping desperately that Catherine wrote the proof. The truth is not revealed until the final scene.