Paul Jefferys
Alumnus; Quantitative Trader
The thing that stands out about Imre Leader, Fellow in Mathematics, is his enthusiasm for maths. It is infectious. Ideas bubble out, one after another, at such a rate that you feel sure you’re going to lose him. Then he pauses, checks you haven’t gone astray (but if you have, it’s ok, because here’s another way to think about it!) and continues.
I had the (mis)fortune to be supervised by Imre in my first term at Trinity. I learnt that I didn’t know a lot of what I thought I knew: who knew that primes and irreducibles were separate concepts? (They aren’t if you just care about natural numbers, but can diverge in other scenarios.) I solved some interesting problems. But the most important thing that I took away was passion and enthusiasm for the subject.