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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. At what age could Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond recite the names of all the ministers of the Third Republic?

2. How many of the Weil conjectures was Grothendieck able to solve?

3. What mountain could be seen from Mochizuki's office window at the University of Kyoto?

4. Who read de Broglie's dissertation and gave an opinion that allowed de Broglie to get his dissertation?

5. How old was Werner Karl Heisenberg when he attended Schrodinger's seminar in Munich in 1926?

Short Essay Questions

1. What contributions did Schrodinger make in later years, and how did they compare to what he produced at the tuberculosis sanitarium?

2. Why did Grothendieck's professor Laurent Schwartz give him an article he published, and what did Grothendieck do with the article?

3. How did a professor from the University of California at Santa Cruz describe Grothendieck?

4. Who was Niels Bohr?

5. How did Erwin Schrodinger become an international superstar?

6. What happened after Grothendieck resigned from the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in 1970?

7. What analogy is used to describe Heisenberg's discovery?

8. When and how did Shinichi Mochizuki publish a proof for a + b = c?

9. Who was one of the first people aware of the existence of Mochizuki's proof, and what was learned when he sent the proof to Ivan Fesenko?

10. How did de Broglie end his career?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A frame story sets the scene for a story within a story. What is the frame story in ”The Heart of the Heart”? How does it reveal a connection between scientific study and an unstable mind?

Essay Topic 2

An analogy is the comparison of an unfamiliar object or idea to a familiar one in an attempt to explain the unfamiliar or to help readers understand characters, events, or concepts. What are some analogies Labutut uses in When We Cease to Understand the World? How do these analogies help readers comprehend characters, events, or concepts?

Essay Topic 3

Genre is a means of classifying literature. What is the genre of the novel? Why is historical fiction and metaphysical fiction?

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