Mathematics Library

Kyoto University actually has two centers for the study of mathematics on its main campus: the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS), and the Department of Mathematics. My second affiliation (in addition to the Department of Philosophy) was to RIMS, and indeed this was how I ended up getting my office on campus, which was located in an annex of RIMS.

I didn't have much occasion to visit the Department of Mathematics building, which was some distance from RIMS, but it did have a good library that I would occasionally need books from. I knew from previous experience that mathematics departments can be quirky places. When I spent several months at Tartu University in Estonia on a Fulbright back in 2007, I gave a talk at the mathematics department there and was later invited to their weekly departmental sauna party. It turned out that adjacent to the mathematics department faculty lounge was a sauna! You can read a short description of this experience in this this blog post from long ago.

There was nothing quite this dramatic in the Kyoto University Mathematics Department. But they did have the only library that I had seen during my time in Kyoto where you had to remove your shoes before entering. (The sign at the entrance gave this instruction in eight different languages.)