The University of Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences occupies a four-storey, mostly redbrick and limestone structure at 222 College Street. Flanked on its west side by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and on its east by the Koffler Centre, the building can appear rather unimposing, especially by U of T’s often exaggerated architectural standards. If not for an odd-shaped aluminum sculpture on the building’s lawn, perhaps no one would notice it. The sculpture — a gift to the centre from the late British sculptor John Robinson — is an artistic rendering of the Borromean Rings, a mathematical concept first appearing in second-century Buddhist art. The rings — in this case hollow triangles — are interlocking, though no two components are actually linked to one another. Studied by knot theory mathematicians, it may seem perplexing but is actually quite simple, if you let Clayton Paulette explain it.
“It’s a rather interesting concept,” Paulette says. “Each component lies at a different plane or sphere — it becomes trivial if you remove any one component.”
With that, he launches into a detailed explanation. Paulette, 50, works at the Fields Institute as a computer projects consultant. He is, by all accounts, a math genius. The Fields Institute is full of those — the staff is mostly comprised of professors and post-doctoral research fellows. But Paulette doesn’t have a degree. In fact, he hasn’t finished high school. Paulette, who is also a cancer survivor, spent much of the last three decades wrestling with a debilitating cocaine addiction, one that he says nearly cost him his life on a number of occasions.
“I dropped out [of school] and left home when I was 15, I couldn’t take it anymore,” he says. “My mom had remarried when I was 10. The guy hated me and made my life hell. When I wanted to leave, my mom said ‘whatever, I was planning to kick you out in a month anyway.’ Her husband gave me a packsack for all my things, my mom gave me 60 bucks and I was on my way.”
It was shortly thereafter that Paulette began experimenting with drugs. “I started with methamphetamines. That first time was the best I’ve ever felt — and then it became an addiction I struggled with for nearly 30 years,” he says.
Despite his drug use, Paulette’s considerable talents helped him carve out an otherwise comfortable existence. Throughout the past two decades he supported himself by building computer systems and consulting for companies, putting to use skills that became increasingly valuable in the Internet age. After a while, his weekend cocaine binging spiraled into unmanageable addiction. Before Paulette hit rock bottom, he was allowing other addicts to use drugs in his Sherbourne Street apartment.
For Paulette, who has been clean for six years, an escape was mathematics, an area in which he had always been recognized as a whiz kid. While working with computers, Paulette remembers spending time generating groups of numbers on spreadsheets that were virtually unsolvable.
“It’s always been an interest of mine and been something I was good at,” he recalls, carrying him into a story about his time at St. Simon’s Shelter (where he stayed intermittently).
“There was this one guy who worked at the shelter, Musa. I was always doing math — generating these random sets of numbers on Excel spreadsheets that couldn’t be cracked. When I was staying at the shelter, Musa would give me these sets of problems he’d find in books. I’d see him coming towards me with this big grin on his face and I’d know what he was up to.”
“I’d always get the answers, but they’d be different from the ones in the books. Still correct, though. I used to have to explain to him that certain questions can have more than one solution. It’d just drive him crazy.”
By the time Musa’s quizzing became a regular occurrence, their good-natured exchanges would draw a modest crowd at the shelter. “It became a fascinating thing for the people at [St. Simon’s]. After a while, they’d just come sit by me when they heard Musa start,” he says.
Paulette’s transition from homeless recovering addict to being employed as a consultant at an academic institution is a substantial feat for someone without a high school diploma. The story behind this transition is even more remarkable.
Spurred on by a colleague’s suggestion, he enrolled in Woodsworth College’s Millie Rotman Shime Academic Bridging Program, which accepts about 600 mature students annually.
“The guys at Woodsworth said I didn’t have any math credits past 10th grade and gave me the choice to either redo math or write the challenge exam,” he says. “I wrote the challenge exam.”
Suffice to say, Paulette passed. “I didn’t even have a calculator — I arrived at all the answers by deriving. I’d provide the proof, but never an answer to the exact decimal place.” Though working, Paulette was still homeless when he applied for admission, and supplied the shelter’s phone number and address as his main line of contact. When they called to inform him of his test score, the program coordinator was caught so off guard by the fact that he had called a homeless shelter that he was absolutely convinced he had dialed the wrong number.
Paulette recalls his reaction when he heard of his acceptance into the program: “I was jumping up and down, ecstatic,” he says. “But I never went to class. They were teaching calculus, I don’t need to learn calculus. I know calculus. All I needed was a library card. I spent all my time at Gerstein.”
Individuals who seek to become masters of their craft — in music, mathematics, or otherwise — have historically tended to be some combination of reclusive and eccentric. Paul Erdos, the famous Hungarian mathematician, who Paulette describes as “talented and tenacious,” was legendary for his eccentricities, most notably his amphetamine habit and his voluntary homelessness. Erdos famously referred to those who died as having “left” and those who stopped doing math as having “died.”
I met Clayton Paulette while interning at JUMP Math, a non-profit founded by John Mighton — Paulette’s colleague at the Fields. He was charged with building a new website and content management system for JUMP. Considering Paulette’s vast technical know-how, he was left with considerable time to talk while working on the project. Channeling Erdos, Paulette once asked me: “Do you still do math, or are you dead?”
While he rejects the notion that people of remarkable talent have to be odd (“I don’t think we’re necessarily weird, that’s unfair”), Clayton Paulette certainly possesses a quirky streak. At times, talking to him can feel like watching an audition tape. Case in point: “I don’t like writing things down. I just try and remember everything, writing things down shows weakness,” or “I don’t like relationships, they’re mostly a distraction.” At other times, he can come across as remarkably meditative and self-critical — a disposition one can only assume comes after years of difficulties and uncertainty. Portions of Paulette’s story have garnered modest media coverage — a Toronto Sun article by Mark Bonokowski titled “Back from the brink” describes Paulette as someone whose hobbies include “abstract mathematics and quantum physics.”
Through a computer certification program Paulette attended in Rexdale, he learned of a posting at the Fields Institute, where he’s now worked for two years. His colleagues have already taken note of his substantial mathematical ability; he says he’s already begun research on a paper he’ll be working on with Mighton.
“I used to walk by the place all the time when I had nothing to hold on to,” Paulette recalls. “Mathematics was my dream, the romance of my life. I used to tell people: ‘one of these days, my name’s gonna be on that door, and I’m not walking in until I get invited in.’”
For Paulette, a job at the Fields Institute meant working amongst his heroes. “It just so happens I finally get invited in for my interview. I walk in there — they gave me a little tour — and I walk into the presentation room and I look at the pictures on the wall, and these guys are some of the biggest names in mathematics since probably the First World War.
“So I’m in his office,” Paulette continues, talking about his first interview with the Fields Institute’s Juris Steprans, a professor of math and statistics. “I’m sitting there talking to this guy and he wants to know what my interests are! And I’m tongue tied for the first time in my life.”
“He looks at me like: ‘what the hell is going on with you?’” Paulette says. Paulette had read some of Steprans’ papers, and was very familiar with the mathematician’s work. “I told him he was like a Bobby Orr to me!”
“There I was, on my way to fulfilling my life’s dream.”
