[No. 232] Takeyuki Nagasawa

I was enrolled at Keio University for nine years, from my undergraduate admission in April 1979 to the completion of my Ph.D. program in March 1988. This was the period when the Faculty of Engineering became the Faculty of Science and Technology, and the department name changed from Administration Engineering to the Department of Mathematics. Personally, my degrees were a Bachelor's and Master's in "Engineering" and a Doctorate in "Science." Therefore, please be aware that the names of the faculty and department differ from the current ones.

Since completing graduate school, I have held research positions specializing in mathematics, but when I was an undergraduate, the profession of researcher was not an option for my future. At the end of my second year, we had to choose our departments. My future was vague, but I was able to narrow it down to the Department of Administration Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering. I knew that the Department of Administration Engineering was called the Department of Mathematics in English—essentially, it was a "Mathematics Department." I liked math, but the "Mathematics" classes in my first and second years didn't leave much of an impression. They were broad math courses intended for engineering students. On the other hand, I found "Physics II" and "Electric Circuits" interesting. The content of Physics II was electromagnetism. This was why I included the "Department of Electronics" as an option. However, upon reflection, I realized I wasn't interested in the phenomena of electricity or electronics themselves, but rather the vector analysis used in electromagnetism and the ordinary differential equations used in electric circuits. So, I decided to proceed to the Department of Administration Engineering. The "Mathematics" classes there were completely different from before. Professor Ogaeri's lectures on the theory of real numbers using Dedekind cuts in "Introduction to Analysis" left a powerful impression. I still use "Dedekind cuts" when I teach analysis at my current university.

When I was a senior, Professor Osamu Kobayashi arrived. He was a research assistant in geometry. At the time, I was not good at geometry. In my junior year geometry class, Klingenberg's "Differential Geometry" and Singer & Thorpe's "Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry" were specified as reference books. I couldn't understand them at all. I remember asking Professor Kobayashi, "Are there any good books on geometry?" and feeling despair when he replied, "Singer & Thorpe." Around that time, I started thinking, "I feel like I've seen Professor Kobayashi somewhere before..." When I was a graduate student, I had a chance to have a drink with him at the Hiyoshi grounds, and he said, "Nagasawa-kun, you're from Ueno High School, right? So am I." My question was resolved: "Ah, that's right! He was the student teacher who came when I was a sophomore in high school!"

Fortunately, I was able to find a research position after finishing graduate school. Recently, I have been pulled into the administration of my university. I am called upon for open campuses and trial classes at high schools. In those settings, I am often asked, "What is the difference between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Engineering?" and "Which one should I choose?" From my experience, there isn't much difference between the two. In fact, when I was serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Science, there was a reversal where the Dean of Science was an engineering graduate and the Dean of Engineering was a science graduate. I usually advise them to think about which approach to natural phenomena they prefer. As an example, I ask which they prefer: thinking about "Why does an airplane (or something called that) fly?" or "How can I build something that flies?" Both are equal in terms of "exploring the principles of flight," but the approach is different. I recommend the Faculty of Science for the former and the Faculty of Engineering for the latter. As for myself, I suppose I prefer the former.

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