Hi,
"If I have had wrong tense, should just be 'If I had'
the passion for numbers that you have for
shrunken heads human heads, cut off and dried in such a way that they shrink in size. Sometimes valued by primitive people
I would run, I wouldn't walk, I would hurry
to the nearest convention of the dead." meeting of dead people
Could you please explain me the underlined parts? This obviously needs a very specific context, which you have not given us.
It sounds like the first professor is a mathematician ad the second one is an anthropologist.
Generally speaking, the first professor is saying that the second professor is strange, macabre and obsessed.
Best wishes, Clive