December 27, 2016 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Hausdorff Misses the Boat to America
As Anti-Semitism swept over Germany, at the University of
Greifswald one of Hausdorff’s lectures was stopped by the Nazi students.
He was moving to and forth from Greifswald to the University of
Bonn.
Over there he was forced to terminate his winter semester Calculus
Program of 1934/35 academic year.
His professional academic career was brought to an end on March
31, 1935 by the university giving him the emeritus status without any acknowledgements
of his everlasting contributions to mathematics.
Yet he continued to work on set theory and topology on his own,
his friend borrowing and bringing him books from the library.
Like so many others, in 1939 he tried for a research scholarship
to the land of free and plenty but he failed.
Only a fraction of European Jews such as Tarski, Gödel, von
Neumann and Einstein were lucky enough to reach the land of rich and plenty and
flourish there.
After all, there is a limit to how many brains American
universities can assimilate, then as it is now.
Then the orders came.
Somewhere in 1942, Felix Hausdorff along with his wife and his
wife’s sister were ordered to head to the Endenich camp in Bonn which was essentially
a transit camp before the culminating journey to the Final Solution.
Hausdorff knew that by missing the ticket to America his fate had
been sealed.
In a joint pact, Hausdorff along with wife and sister-in-law
consumed the first commercially available barbiturate sodium diethyl
barbiturate on January 26, 1942.
In excess of course and died with dignity.
I personally would have done something very similar in order to
avoid and go through the humiliation that was being meted out to the inmates of
Auschwitz.
All his handwritten manuscripts, notes that constitutes his
Nachlass is now preserved in the University and State Library of Bonn, the
least the nation could do as a mark of apology for the crimes committed by the
Weimar state against its minorities.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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