Chris Skau has been a great local host. He arranged all of the local accommodations and has been very attentive to us. He has given us lots of suggestions of things to do and has helped arrange them for us when necessary. In particular, he arranged for us to take a boat trip up the coast to the Arctic Circle later this month which we are really looking forward to. At the same time, talking to him is a real pleasure. He's a real scholar of mathematics, not just the theory, but the history as well, e.g. I think he has read all of Abel's work. Later this month he will be in Oslo to interview the Abel Prize winner as he has done for the past several years. It's hard to believe that he is going to be 70 years old and retiring this year (if I look that good at 50, I'll be happy). The other day he was telling me about being a little boy in the early 1940's when the German's occupied Norway - how his mother instructed him to hide from the German soldiers if he saw them, and how he remembers the allied forces flying in and bombing an occupied factory nearby while they hid in the basement. His only sign of age is his complete inablity to deal with technology. For example, he loaned us the cellphone that his kids gave him for Christmas since he never uses it. He warned us that his son might call just to check if he still had it.
We haven't done much work together yet, but so far it's been nice for me just to try to get some things done without having to worry about other responsibilities. I'm sure we will talk more after his term ends tomorrow, and I start giving a series of 3 talks. Each talk is 45 minutes then 15 break then another 45 minutes. Yikes!
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