Chapter 12: Geometry Tales of Elegance and Love

Paul Ernest and I were appointed to mathematics education posts in Cambridge at the same time—a time closer to the beginning of our careers than to our retirements. I enjoyed working with Paul, and we seemed to have a great deal of time in those days just to sit and talk with each other and our colleagues at Homerton College. I have followed Paul’s illustrious career with interest and pleasure ever since. This is not the place to assess his contribution to our field, and I am not the person to do so. Suffice to say that my inspiration for writing this particular offering is Paul’s generous and consistent appreciation of the wide range of ideas and scholarly outputs of his colleagues, and his ability to enthuse about and affirm them. I was tempted at first to channel my efforts for this chapter into a short piece on mathematical logic—one of our shared interests all those years ago in Cambridge. But then I also knew that I had something else simmering away in my head: not logic, as such, and not really mathematics education, but I was excited by it, and writing it up as my contribution here is appropriate, if somewhat different from the alternatives that I had considered.