I would have enjoyed seeing a picture of the Fields ceremony in Moscow in 1966, but there is none. There is a photo of Smale at the White House with Clinton. There are several gaps in the biographical material. Batterson should scrutinize his own sentence. The clues are all there.
Farmers take major risks with every planting season.
And, as to his mathematics, Smale found a few good teachers and accessible problems as a young man that permitted him to make the giant leap to Fields Medal research. Another disquieting gap emerges in the discussion of the Jenny Harrison case. This woman reviewer asks if it is balanced to write 110 pages on the Free Speech Movement and conflicts with the NSF and less than six pages on issues and problems that have been vigorously discussed in every mathematics department in the world. It is ever so much easier to criticize external institutions than to examine our own internal structure and flaws. Yet one loud message of the Free Speech Movement was that we should have the courage to address our own weaknesses.