"In 1933 Landau was dismissed from his [University of Göttingen] chair on the grounds of his race. An important colleague... Ludwig Bieberbach ...wrote the following lines in a treatise on Personality structure and mathematical creativity: "In this way... the ultimate reason behind the courageous rejection which the students at Göttingen University meted out to a great mathematician, Edmund Landau, was that his un-German style in research and teaching had become intolerable to German sensitivities. A people which has seen how alien desires for dominion are gnawing at its identity, how enemies of the people are working to impose their alien ways on it, must reject teachers of a type alien to it." The English mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy... responded to Bierbach... "There are many of us, many English and many Germans, who said things during the (First) War which we scarcely meant and are sorry to remember now. Anxiety for one's own position, dread of falling behind the rising torrent of folly, determination at all costs not to be outdone, may be natural if not particularly heroic excuses. Prof. Bieberbach's reputation excludes such explanation for his utterances; and I find myself driven to the more uncharitable conclusion that he really believes them true.""
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Jörg Arndt & Christoph Haenel, Pi - Unleashed (2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Landau
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Any book that revisits the foundations of analysis has to reckon with the formidable precedent of Edmund Landau's Gru…"
"It is one thing to reflect, as Bieberbach did, for instance on the relative pedagogical merit of different ways to in…"
"Landau was the son of a well-to-do Berlin gynecologist (who invented the myomectomy operation)... his mother was from…"
"Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein bißchen meschugge."
"Please don't read the preface for the teacher."
"I will ask of you only the ability to read English and to think logically—no high school mathematics, and certainly n…"
"The multiplication table will not occur in this book, not even the theorem,2 \cdot 2 = 4,but I would recommend, as an…"
"My book is written, as befits such easy material, in merciless telegram style ("Axiom," "Definition," "Theorem," "Pro…"
"He possessed an enormous capacity for work - up to 12 or more hours a day. ... He worked to completely rigorous rules…"
"Not only the physical but also the intellectual landscape of German-language mathematics in the early 1930s would be …"