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Why I won’t surrender my mathematical identity, writes Junaid Mubeen, Director of Education at Whizz Education in Q.E.D.
My name is Junaid Mubeen, and I am a recovering mathematician. 
That’s not me, but I’ll take the label (source).
I usually pick up a few laughs — or at least a few groans — with this introduction. It is my light-hearted way of recognising that I no longer earn the stripes of a research mathematician. I am reluctant, however, to surrender the label of mathematician entirely. My mathematical training has shaped my identity and worldview. I take heart when friends and colleagues remark on my distinctly analytical mannerisms. It means they have connected with the essence of who I am and how I think.
My formal study of mathematics ceased in 2011 when I completed my doctorate. Informally, I have never stopped thinking and working through maths problems. Some are motivated by work, others by life, and most by nothing in particular. My main reason for pursuing maths is maths itself. The maths I partake in these days is largely recreational; I delight in the everyday puzzles and paradoxes that fill my bookshelf and social media feed. They are far removed from the obscure edges of research mathematics that I invested four years of my life in. Some people take offence at the suggestion that I still have mathematical blood in me. He hasn’t even got a postdoc, they’ll remark, what the hell kind of mathematician is he, anyway?!
For the purists, a mathematician is no more and no less than a creator of proofs; one only earns the accolade by architecting previously undiscovered proofs. A cursory look at the past and the future of mathematics reveals just how limiting this criterion is...
In mathematics, the promise (and hype) of Artificial Intelligence takes the form of automated theorem provers that may one day render humans redundant in the quest for mathematical discoveries. Maths is more complex and more abstract than ever; often to the point of alienating all but the patient few who can labour through hundreds of pages of tedium to extract the minutest of insights. Mathematical research may one day become a realm that humans witness from afar with barely a trace of understanding, never daring to venture to its cutting edge. If hype becomes reality, intelligent machines will emerge as the existential threat mathematicians never imagined they’d have to contend with.
Source: Medium
