The Depth of His Attachment

A year younger than the century, Yole was herself now over seventy, and as Zariski's tinnitus worsened and his moods more often darkened into depression, she found it increasingly difficult to cope with the old three-story house on Lancaster Street. In spite of Zariski's objections she began to search for a smaller, more man ageable dwelling, and in 1975 they sold the house that they were both so fond of and moved across the river to an apartment in Brookline—“a very tiring and time consuming process,” as Zariski wrote to Teissier.

After the move his memory began to fail, but he found refuge from the encroach ing silence and the darkening of his mind for the few hours each day that he was able to concentrate on mathematics. Intensely aware of the weakening of his creative power, he tried to work in areas where it was still possible for him to accomplish something; he focused his efforts on giving a coherent sequence of results that would at last put the theory of equisingularity on a solid basis. Working on “Foundations of a general theory of equisingularity” [97] took all his energy, but as he said one day during the writing of it, “The more active the mind is, the happier one feels.”