One of the anxieties shared by most of the characters in the play is the fear of losing or wasting time. This fear is centered on the idea that in the field of mathematics, most major contributions are made by men in their early twenties. For Robert, this issue, amplified as the onset of his illness, meant that he had a very limited number of lucid years in which to work.

In the first scene, when Catherine imagines speaking to her father after his death, he calls the days that she spent sleeping late or reading magazines “lost,” accusing, “You threw them away. And you’ll never know what you threw away with them – the work you lost, the ideas you didn’t have, discoveries you never made because you were moping in your bed at four in the afternoon” (9). Ironically, while Catherine was spending days in bed, she was spending her nights working on a major contribution to the field. For Catherine, the looming threat of a possible genetic illness makes time even more valuable.

Hal describes his older colleagues who use amphetamines to avoid slowing down because, “They think math’s a young man’s game.