/sci/ - Science & Math

Another year or two passes. K puts out a few more pieces to do with boundary functions, has a hard time at his post - and just up and quits in 1969, before the decade is out. From Harvard to Michigan doctorate to west coast teaching post and multiple celebrated publications... back to the parents' house, all in one decade. Even in 1971, the time of his final communication, K had not yet turned thirty.

K's final contribution to the literature is this challenge problem in geometry (787), also appearing in Mathematics Magazine. Notice the location: Lombard, Illinois. K no longer affiliates with an institution or geography of same, but put this one while itinerant at his parents' house, before heading out to the shack.

It is impossible not to see some foreshadowing in this problem, at this critical period of life and career: it's a problem about laying matchsticks on square grids in such-and-such a way. He could have chosen anything to call them: pencils, pens, dowels, toothpicks, /line segments/, anything at all.

He just had to call them matchsticks. Itself an object made out of wood, designed to combust.

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