For whomever might be interested in anectodes about mathematicians' personal lives:
My girlfriend's family was related to https://planetmath.org/kallevaisala and she told me this story which was part of the family lore. The family and friends were having some kind of get-together celebration maybe a wedding or so and prof. Vaisala's wife had bought him a brand new suit to look good for the occasion.
During the party they were playing croquet in the garden and prof. Vaisala got really into the game, but had the realization that suit-pants may not be the best for playing croquet. He could have stuffed the end of his pant-legs into his socks but that didn't really work, maybe socks were too tight and pants too big. So, he found a pair of scissors somewhere, and cut his pant-legs short. His wife started crying. She didn't really appreciate the genius of mathematicians.
All of the mathematicians I’ve known ARE weird - really into technicalities and finding loopholes.
But for some of them (particularly undergrad math majors)… I think the weirdness is a bit of an affectation that they adopt having heard so many stories about oddball geniuses. They fear that if they were able to behave and relate to normal people it proves that they lack the otherworldly genius they want to be know for.
Two physicists I think it was Bohr and Heisenberg were traveling on a train in Scotland together. Bohr looked out the train-window and said: Hey Heisenberg, look at those lambs!
Heisenberg replied: What about them?
Bohr: They are all black. Isn't that a big coincidence?
Heisenberg: Yes. At least this side of them.
I may have forgotten who this anecdote was really about, but is one story about how strange those guys can be. :-)
Reminds me of the story about Weiner, who forgot he moved.
Apparently a true story, but the version where he also didn’t recognize his daughter (waiting for him at his previous home to show him to the new one) was an embellishment; at his funeral, his daughter said “dad never forgot who his children were”.
'What also surprised me in the biography was the striking difference between Jews in Italy and in Poland. [...] Leopold Infeld’s autobiography [...] describes the Jewish ghettos in Poland as being almost completely isolated from the general population. [...] She was utterly surprised when she first saw the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, remarking: “The Jews in side curls and kaftans made me feel that I was living in two different nations.'
I wonder if she was failing to distinguish between various kinds of Jews. Compare the majority of American Jews today, and the Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn, for example. This, too, was the case in Poland, home to the vast majority of the world's Jews at the time. On the one hand, there were a number of assimilated Jews and Poles of Jewish ancestry (like Tarski, Brzechwa Steinhaus, and so on). On the other, there were plenty of religious Jews of a more orthodox strain. And given that 1/3 of the population of Warsaw was Jewish, it would be difficult to imagine otherwise.
Part of my ancestry is European Jewish and I'm sure my grandparents and great grandparents would have stories to tell but I was never interested in this while they were still alive. Kind of funny how that works. They were not religious.
Hasidic teaching stories are charming. Here is one:
When Rabbi Zusha was on his deathbed, his students found him in great distress. They tried to comfort him by telling him that he was almost as wise as Moses, so he was sure to be judged positively in Heaven. He replied, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses?' They will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?'"
I talked to one of Zariski's students about this... He mention to me that the article said he studied ”real” algebraic geometry, which is a different subject —he studied “complex” algebraic geometry as well as algebraic geometry without a limiting adjective.
> On the day he and his fiancée Yole were getting married, with Yole already dressed in white and veiled and the rabbi standing by, the bridegroom was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was working on a mathematical problem. Luckily, Yole was neither angry nor surprised; she was amused. Ha! I need to tell this to my wife.
Fellas and ladies, get yourself a spouse who understands when you're late to your own wedding because you are inspired by your passions.
And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths under the czars.
Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled. And the process killed literally millions -- some from outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement.
Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural societies can be very conservative. And things had been slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century. Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that could easily have gone the other way and saved the institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations of improvements.
Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions. Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918! As flawed as Communism is, it did lurch Russians into the 20th century.
The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.
Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.
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My girlfriend's family was related to https://planetmath.org/kallevaisala and she told me this story which was part of the family lore. The family and friends were having some kind of get-together celebration maybe a wedding or so and prof. Vaisala's wife had bought him a brand new suit to look good for the occasion.
During the party they were playing croquet in the garden and prof. Vaisala got really into the game, but had the realization that suit-pants may not be the best for playing croquet. He could have stuffed the end of his pant-legs into his socks but that didn't really work, maybe socks were too tight and pants too big. So, he found a pair of scissors somewhere, and cut his pant-legs short. His wife started crying. She didn't really appreciate the genius of mathematicians.
All of the mathematicians I’ve known ARE weird - really into technicalities and finding loopholes.
But for some of them (particularly undergrad math majors)… I think the weirdness is a bit of an affectation that they adopt having heard so many stories about oddball geniuses. They fear that if they were able to behave and relate to normal people it proves that they lack the otherworldly genius they want to be know for.
Let’s also normalize genius being normal people
Heisenberg replied: What about them?
Bohr: They are all black. Isn't that a big coincidence?
Heisenberg: Yes. At least this side of them.
I may have forgotten who this anecdote was really about, but is one story about how strange those guys can be. :-)
Apparently a true story, but the version where he also didn’t recognize his daughter (waiting for him at his previous home to show him to the new one) was an embellishment; at his funeral, his daughter said “dad never forgot who his children were”.
'What also surprised me in the biography was the striking difference between Jews in Italy and in Poland. [...] Leopold Infeld’s autobiography [...] describes the Jewish ghettos in Poland as being almost completely isolated from the general population. [...] She was utterly surprised when she first saw the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, remarking: “The Jews in side curls and kaftans made me feel that I was living in two different nations.'
I wonder if she was failing to distinguish between various kinds of Jews. Compare the majority of American Jews today, and the Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn, for example. This, too, was the case in Poland, home to the vast majority of the world's Jews at the time. On the one hand, there were a number of assimilated Jews and Poles of Jewish ancestry (like Tarski, Brzechwa Steinhaus, and so on). On the other, there were plenty of religious Jews of a more orthodox strain. And given that 1/3 of the population of Warsaw was Jewish, it would be difficult to imagine otherwise.
I am far from an expert but I don't think late 19th century or early 20th century Europe would be directly comparable to 21st century USA. It's an interesting topic and maybe some starting points are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_secularism https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-pop... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl
Part of my ancestry is European Jewish and I'm sure my grandparents and great grandparents would have stories to tell but I was never interested in this while they were still alive. Kind of funny how that works. They were not religious.
When Rabbi Zusha was on his deathbed, his students found him in great distress. They tried to comfort him by telling him that he was almost as wise as Moses, so he was sure to be judged positively in Heaven. He replied, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses?' They will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?'"
Fellas and ladies, get yourself a spouse who understands when you're late to your own wedding because you are inspired by your passions.
And that's not evening counting the USSR's millions "resettled" in ethic operations, with about a 20%-25% death rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
And then we have the epic years in the 1920's of famine from screwing up the agricultural system, and selectively choosing ethic groups to take food from, the dwarf the famine deaths under the czars.
Basic quality of life went up fast, going from feudal agriculture to an industrial society. But then it stalled. And the process killed literally millions -- some from outright murder, some from overwhelming mismanagement.
Many never wanted the Tsars gone to begin with; agricultural societies can be very conservative. And things had been slowly improving under the monarchy, under the same pressures that modernized western Europe in the mid 19th century. Historians cite a lot of mistakes by that last Tsar that could easily have gone the other way and saved the institution. He really screwed it up after a few generations of improvements.
So... depends.
The Tsar and the aristocracy failed at their job. They deserved their fate, to be fired. Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.
Unfortunately, Communism does not have the checks and balances of Capitalism, and it lends itself to abuse by tyrants and dictators.