17/03/2021

Pedro Campos and the numbers: a serene love story

In one of his most famous chronicles, the Minas Gerais writer Paulo Mendes Campos says that love ends without much fanfare. Just like the end, the beginning of love stories can also be serene. About to earn his doctorate in mathematics from IMPA, Pedro Campos, a fellow countryman (but not a relative) of the author, didn't fall in love with the discipline at first sight. Also inclined towards computer science and mechanical engineering, he chose mathematics as his undergraduate degree "by process of elimination." "Perhaps it's more romantic to say that I found something pleasurable in mathematics and remained in it for a decade," he jokes.

This Friday (19), at 2 pm, Campos defends the thesis “Extremal results in random and pseudo-random structures”, via videoconference. The presentation will be broadcast on the institute's YouTube channel . Supervised by Robert Morris, the work focuses on graphs, mathematical objects that model relationships between people or things. This is a relatively new area in mathematics, which is increasingly attracting the interest of researchers worldwide.

“We can imagine, and even draw, a graph of the friendship relationship between people. I, in particular, study so-called random graphs. Imagine if, at the beginning of the universe, someone decided, by flipping a coin, who would be friends with whom in life. That also becomes a probability problem. What can be expected from a typical graph defined by heads or tails?” explains the doctoral student.

Born in Belo Horizonte (MG), Campos spent his entire life in Contagem, a municipality in the metropolitan region of the Minas Gerais capital. He saw his parents, both with university degrees, as role models. “I was extremely calm and obedient. I was consistently a student who did all my homework until I was 16 years old,” he recalls.

Over the years, his preference didn't lean towards any particular subject. "What was really good at school was playing. But apparently that wasn't a subject," he laughs. The hours he spent building structures with Lego, however, led his father to suspect he would be an engineer. A prediction that, in fact, "almost came true," he says.

With the arrival of adolescence, a predilection for the exact sciences emerged. He enrolled in a computer science degree at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), but found the pace "too intense." Later, he switched to mechanical engineering at the same university, where he encountered "a lot of information thrown at him without explanations."

He was satisfied with the mathematics program at the institution in Minas Gerais, where the content was "taught from scratch." "I found knowledge that requires a lot of time and patience to learn. In the course, you learn everything, from addition and subtraction to relatively recent topics in mathematical research," he reports.

Dazzled by the novelties of the university environment, Campos confesses that, during a period of the course, he did the “bare minimum”. On a personal level, however, he considers that he lived an incredible experience. “It’s difficult not to leave your own personal bubble when there’s so much interesting stuff happening.”

Already in his master's program at IMPA, where he enrolled in 2014, his studies dominated his life. "It's difficult to balance the pressure we put on ourselves when an opportunity arises that seems good," he says. The effort during the research was so great that the mathematician considered not continuing with his academic training.

Once he started his doctorate, he decided to do things differently. “I began by not pressuring myself to finish. To a certain extent, it’s okay if things go wrong. By accepting this premise, I feel that I went through my doctorate in a healthier way. I also feel that this care I took of myself was reflected in my research, for which I have a certain fondness.”

The attraction to random graphs stems, in part, from the freshness of the subject. “There’s a certain simplicity in the aesthetics of how it’s done. But there’s also a lack of technical background to deal with the problems. It seems to me that the tools in this area are being built now, and very quickly.”

The relaxed attitude of his advisor, Robert Morris, known for attending combinatorics community conferences in flip-flops , was fundamental in allowing the doctoral student to approach the project with more ease. “He was exactly the advisor I needed. In such a demanding environment, I had the pressure relief I was looking for. He's a great researcher. And he gave me the freedom to learn and research whatever I wanted, in addition to creating a favorable environment for that to happen,” he says.

“If he hadn’t left England to venture into our lands, I probably wouldn’t be doing mathematics today,” imagines Campos, who has already begun his postdoctoral studies at the Czech Academy of Sciences, which should last two years.

In this final stretch before defending his thesis, to alleviate the stress caused by the pandemic, the mathematician began to venture into different activities, such as yoga, guitar, the study of music theory, and creative writing. “I wanted to discover if the mathematical thinking that developed in me could be transferred to something completely different. Or perhaps research will attract me for a while longer. Only fate knows.”