Imaginary Numbers are Real.

I first visited the complex plane 45 years ago, in High School. It was love at first sight, and I have been smitten ever since. Thank you, Margaret Matchett, my math teacher that year.

EDIT: I just looked her up on the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Go back three “generations” and you get to Ludwig Boltzmann, whose work has fascinated me since I first heard about it, not long after Mrs. Matchett’s math class.