“Adventures of a Mathematician” – A story problem [MOVIE REVIEW]
Philippe Tiokinsi as Stan Ulam in “Adventures of a Mathematician.” Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Productions. The objectives of Thor Klein, writer and director of “Adventures of a Mathematician,” were very well-intentioned, but good intentions, while not exactly leading to the road to hell, don’t make an especially compelling movie. That is not to say that Stan Ulam, the mathematician, did not lead an interesting life; he did. The problem was in the focus the director took, or more specifically didn’t take, when adapting Ulam’s autobiography of the same name. Stan Ulam, a Polish-Jewish émigré whose early mathematical genius brought him to the attention of Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann, recognized by many as the most significant and brilliant mathematician of his time (essentially the whole of the 20th Century). The list of his accomplishments in the fields of mathematics, physics, statistics, engineering, and computer science is too long to itemize. And he believed in the genius of Ulam, inviting him to Princeton’s renowned program at the Institute for Advanced Study and recruiting him to teach at Harvard. When the war in Europe broke out, Ulam wisely left Poland…
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