5 ms·

Sadly, this article does not answer the question of why such a concentration of brilliance developed at Göttingen. If we wanted to build a new Göttingen, how wo

Sadly, this article does not answer the question of why such a concentration of brilliance developed at Göttingen. If we wanted to build a new Göttingen, how would we do it? What factors allowed Göttingen to exist? For most of a century, Germany was leading in most scientific and academic fields, but what allowed this? When we think of the Golden Age of physics we are thinking of a cultural event that had its center in Germany, but why? And why has Germany been so dull and flat ever since? Clearly, building a liberal democracy is not enough to ensure such a cultural event. Much of Germany was liberal but non-democratic during its golden age, as other places were, but what made Germany special at this time?

chunkyguy 2y ago
this sounds like a good explanation: > University of Göttingen had more academic freedom than generations past. They were promised intellectual autonomy and freedom from close religious supervision. Instead, they were recruited solely to advance knowledge and carry out original research. The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained.
- nextos 2y ago
  After working at several universities, and interacting with lots of institutions on both sides of the pond, I think this freedom issue is also what makes American Academia more successful than European Academia these days. In Europe, academic freedom is limited because the structure we have resembles a very wide pyramid, with some minor differences across fields and countries. Junior professorships are more rare and more difficult to get into. The result is always the same, a full professor that controls his field locally and lots of expendable badly-paid postdocs working for him. Access to funding is also much more limited, which in turn restricts the capacity of said postdocs to pursue their own ideas, even while working under the umbrella of the professor. In the US, tenure-track assistant professorships are much more common and requirements to apply are more flexible. Seed grants for junior faculty members are also common and not too hard to obtain. The result is a lot more freedom to explore. Basically, it is the same issue as with technology. EU suffers from over-regulation and control by some rent-seeking elites.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    My experience is different. The main advantage of the American Academia is the availability of entry-level faculty positions. Success rates for funding applications are also higher. On the other hand, PhD students and postdocs are less independent from their supervisors than in Europe. They lack the usual protections as employees you would expect in Europe, and it's not as easy for them to get independent funding. Students and postdocs are also paid better than in the US (relative to what they would get outside the academia). I'm not sure about the status of academic freedom. Administrators, politicians, and donors seem to have more influence in the US, and the entire academia seems to be more politicized.
    - nextos 2y ago
      I agree, that's essentially what I said. Entry-level faculty positions and funding are much more common in the US.
  - j7ake 2y ago
    Differences (structure, funding, prestige) between institutes within Europe / USA are way larger than the differences between Europe versus USA. What really matters in the end is whether an institute is able to attract “rockstars” in their field. Even better if these rockstars care about their institute and are willing to hire and develop young talent. A single rockstar can elevate the prestige of an entire institution: look at Richard Sutton at University of Alberta, or Thomas Cech at Colorado.
    - vintermann 2y ago
      This was my impression also, that there is a lot of difference how academia works across Europe. I'm not really an academic, but I went to a small international machine learning conference some years ago. The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently.
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently. Norway is a more expensive country to live in than France.
- KittenInABox 2y ago
  > The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained. This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit.
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  Nowadays various religion like paradigmas have returned to sabotage scientific progress. Some are obvious,other less so.the biggest though in my opinion are the "academia has to enulate a company" and the progressive paradigm. Just hand money to individials/groups whos papers changed the world. If they want to buy services from a institution,thats their thing.
openrisk 2y ago
You are assuming a causal relation direct link between underlying factors and outcomes. It may well be that if Gottingen didn't exist some other place would have been the epicenter of a scientific revolution that was ripe to happen. One would then try to figure out what made that place special.
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  But if some other place had been the epicenter of a scientific revolution would Gottingen have prevented that? Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things independently? We could ask, why only Gottingen?
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    >Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things We did. Göttingen was an important place, but not the epicenter of math. Mathematicians were working all over the globe from China to India, Russia to Britain, America and Germany. Just to mention one of the maybe most gifted people of that period in the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan, people are literally still going through his work and finding novel things. It's just that we're much better story tellers when it comes to some regions of the world. If you went by movies and biographies you'd think Alan Turing did half of all computer science, who remembers Konrad Zuse? That's one area where Germany routinely gets snubbed in the public imagination.
readthenotes1 2y ago
It is actually also seeming to be asking the wrong question. Not why Göttingen, but why Germany. The universe may have been a natural attractor like big universities everywhere, but if the country surrounding it were impoverished mentally, it would not have much to attract.
- baumschubser 2y ago
  One answer given at the time by Heinrich Heine was that Germany didn’t have the revolution that put the new bourgeois class in power (like in France). Therefore censorship, political repression and the dead end of many „German“ micro states meant that philosophy and other disciplines where a way to work on the topics of the new age without getting in conflict with the extraordinary dimension of political backwardness. You could say England is the proof that it does not have to be that way, but they where pioneering capitalist economy, so that’s another case. Heinrich Heine hated Göttingen btw.
Goettingenknowr 2y ago
There were plenty of accomplished mathematicians before Hilbert. But the real golden age of Göttingen math and physics was due to a large recruitment effort led by David Hilbert. After realizing some early success in his recruitment effort, the reputation of Göttingen as the place to be for math and physics grew more organically.
- j7ake 2y ago
  It shows you how valuable it is to have these superstars in your institute. Hiring One hilbert is worth more than hiring a thousand median scientists, and way cheaper too!
  - throwawaydummy 2y ago
    > This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit. (from a comment above) Idk much about math or anything would love to make it to AGI that can tell me which opinion is correct when reading HN
- jan_Inkepa 2y ago
  I read a bunch of Hilbert's letters once, thinking it would be an interesting window into a significant mind. It was 90% departmental politics - not really the cynical kind: he was really concerned with getting good mathematicians jobs (in Göttingen or elsewhere). And you get to watch him observe all his efforts come to naught as the German political situation goes nuts building up to the Second World War, and employment restrictions are added, people flee, etc. .
- Jipazgqmnm 2y ago
  That is just partially true. Hilbert was essential but "just" one factor amongst others. For example, there was also Felix Klein (who brought Hilbert to Göttingen) who was more on the teaching side. He even designed the house from the ground up in a way that he thought would be optimal for teaching and working together. There is a really good article by Norbert Schappacher called "Das Mathematische Institut der Universität Göttingen im Nationalsozialismus" or "The Mathematical Institute of the University of Göttingen under National Socialism" https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_files/GoeNS.pdf https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_file... You can DeepL it. Here is just the first paragraph: Göttingen has been a name in the mathematical world since Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). However, from the end of the 19th century until the National Socialists seized power, it was for many the center of the mathematical world, and in this respect it outstripped the traditional centers of interest: Paris and Berlin was above all the joint work of David Hilbert (1862–1943) and Felix Klein (1849–1925), around whom an increasingly important mathematical institute was formed. Hilbert's role was on the side of creative mathematical research, which he pursued with complete openness to all possible new ideas and with a versatility not seen since Gauss. Felix Klein, on the other hand, was above all an exceptionally successful organizer and academic teacher in Göttingen – four years before his appointment to Göttingen, a health breakdown had ended the period of his most original mathematical research. It goes into great detail from the pre-war to the post-war era. In addition, mathematics and physics were very much intertwined in those days - one inspired the other. And Göttingen was essentially a village - everyone knew everyone. They would meet up in a bar in the evening and speak about whats on their mind. That way, there was also a regular get-together with the local industry. For example Robert Wichard Pohl, head of the 1st physics institute (called "a patriarch of physics" or "The good Lord"), Gustav Tammann, head of the institute for physical chemistry, and the heads of Ruhstrat (a local company specialized in developing and manufacturing high-temperature industrial furnaces, transformers, etc.) regularly met. Pohl wanted to have a furnace for what was later called the Czochralski method (creating pure crystals) and Ruhstrat built the stuff. Or in 1894, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Prof. Walter Nernst, Ruhstrat created the adjustable sliding resistor, the basis for adjusting and changing resistances as well as current and voltage. They supplied the first private homes and businesses in Göttingen with electricity using electrical block stations and developed the electricity meter. Lots of aspects came together to thrive, not just Hilbert. P.S. Fun fact: Ernst (or Adolf?) Ruhstrat had the first car in town and later sold it to Tammann.
jackcosgrove 2y ago
I'll venture a couple guesses. 1) Humboldt's university reforms creating graduate education and research universities. This doesn't explain the seed of German intellectual activity as it was a relatively late development, but it does explain the institutionalization of German intellectual activity. As to the seed... 2) German was the language with the most literate speakers in Europe during the Enlightenment. For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions, and Germans were the most numerous of the Protestant cultural-linguistic groups.
- LtWorf 2y ago
  Sources?
  - Someone 2y ago
    For the “For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions” claim, the map in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enlightenment#Literacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enligh... supports that claim. It mentions ten countries. The four most literate were largely Protestant, the six least literate largely Catholic.
    - playingalong 2y ago
      The map in the link is strange. Shows 21st century countries while it pertains to times a few hundred years ago. This doesn't convey the trust.
Merrill 2y ago
It's not clear whether it is desirable to build a new Göttingen. Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits. "Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture" https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geometric-langlands-conjecture-20240719/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geom... is an interesting article that describes the multi-year effort to obtain this important result. The final proof has nine authors affiliated with seven institutions: Denis Gaitsgory, Max Planck Institute; Sam Raskin and Joakim Færgeman, Yale University; Dima Arinkin, University of Wisconsin; Nick Rozenblyum, University of Toronto; Dario Beraldo, University College London; Lin Chen, Tsinghua University; Justin Campbell and Kevin Lin, University of Chicago.
- noch 2y ago
  > Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits. Lmao. Only someone who has never been a part of a high performance team with excellent mentors available in person throughout the day, can possibly believe this. Alternatively, try this sentence: "Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of a married couple living together in one place to raise a family."
  - unserioustubes 2y ago
    [dead]
  - neaanopri 2y ago
    Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX
    - noch 2y ago
      > Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX Sex and LaTex! I dig it!
    - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 2y ago
I think you're mixing the question of what creates great mathematics department and what makes a region generally interesting (plus the article actually answers all those questions well as other commenters note). Germany has many great mathematicians at present. Just by expanding population and budgets, it probably has more great mathematicians than in the Göttingen days. These mathematicians are not as famous as the Göttingeners of the 1920s, however, fundamentally because earlier mathematicians laid the foundation of the field and later researchers basically have built on those foundations and can't claim the same glory. As to post-war Germany being boring - I'd assume but it seem neither here nor there.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
chromanoid 2y ago
Göttingen is still a top 200 university, and as far as I remember a talk by Jens Frahm has the highest density of living Nobel Laureates. After the war a famous French singer made a song about Göttingen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk And I think she sings of a left leaning free spirit that bloomed again after the war very soon. Academic lifestyle and a focus on the strife for knowledge are still substantial cultural and economic pillars of Göttingen.
- vinnyvichy 2y ago
  I was thinking the divide in teutonic culture is not north and south but diagonal. Too far east and too far south they get trigger happy, Schwabians just optimally arrogant, Hamburgers are too nice.. Draw a line that passes thru Ulm & Goettingen, wide enough to contain also ___ TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_sanction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_sanction
- Jipazgqmnm 2y ago
  Indeed. Hans-Gunther Klein, the then director of the Junges Theater Göttingen, had seen the famous French chansonnière Barbara at a concert in early 1964 and invited her to perform in Göttingen. Due to her life story and her own escape from the Nazis, she initially declined the invitation, but then reluctantly accepted it the following day. She demanded that a grand piano be provided for her performance. When she arrived at the theater on July 4, 1964, however, she found a baby grand piano on the stage. Barbara was extremely annoyed and categorically refused to give the concert. It seemed impossible to fulfill her request, although Hans-Gunther Klein tried everything. In the end, however, a grand piano was procured, which an old lady had made available and which ten students carried through the city. Despite the artist's initial displeasure and the two-hour delay before the concert began, Barbara was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience, which greatly impressed her. Due to the great success of her first appearance and the unexpectedly warm atmosphere in the city, she extended her engagement by a week. On the afternoon before her last concert, she summarized the impressions she had gathered over the past few days, which had been unexpectedly positive, in the rough version of the chanson Göttingen, which she wrote in the garden of the Junges Theater, and performed it (not yet fully formulated and with a different melody) that same evening. The success of the chanson was sudden and overwhelming. She then returned to Paris, where she completed the lyrics and composition. The Junges Theater at that time was housed in the house of the current Lumiere cinema.

chunkyguy 2y ago

this sounds like a good explanation: > University of Göttingen had more academic freedom than generations past. They were promised intellectual autonomy and freedom from close religious supervision. Instead, they were recruited solely to advance knowledge and carry out original research. The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained.

nextos 2y ago
After working at several universities, and interacting with lots of institutions on both sides of the pond, I think this freedom issue is also what makes American Academia more successful than European Academia these days. In Europe, academic freedom is limited because the structure we have resembles a very wide pyramid, with some minor differences across fields and countries. Junior professorships are more rare and more difficult to get into. The result is always the same, a full professor that controls his field locally and lots of expendable badly-paid postdocs working for him. Access to funding is also much more limited, which in turn restricts the capacity of said postdocs to pursue their own ideas, even while working under the umbrella of the professor. In the US, tenure-track assistant professorships are much more common and requirements to apply are more flexible. Seed grants for junior faculty members are also common and not too hard to obtain. The result is a lot more freedom to explore. Basically, it is the same issue as with technology. EU suffers from over-regulation and control by some rent-seeking elites.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  My experience is different. The main advantage of the American Academia is the availability of entry-level faculty positions. Success rates for funding applications are also higher. On the other hand, PhD students and postdocs are less independent from their supervisors than in Europe. They lack the usual protections as employees you would expect in Europe, and it's not as easy for them to get independent funding. Students and postdocs are also paid better than in the US (relative to what they would get outside the academia). I'm not sure about the status of academic freedom. Administrators, politicians, and donors seem to have more influence in the US, and the entire academia seems to be more politicized.
  - nextos 2y ago
    I agree, that's essentially what I said. Entry-level faculty positions and funding are much more common in the US.
- j7ake 2y ago
  Differences (structure, funding, prestige) between institutes within Europe / USA are way larger than the differences between Europe versus USA. What really matters in the end is whether an institute is able to attract “rockstars” in their field. Even better if these rockstars care about their institute and are willing to hire and develop young talent. A single rockstar can elevate the prestige of an entire institution: look at Richard Sutton at University of Alberta, or Thomas Cech at Colorado.
  - vintermann 2y ago
    This was my impression also, that there is a lot of difference how academia works across Europe. I'm not really an academic, but I went to a small international machine learning conference some years ago. The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French professor, apparently. Norway is a more expensive country to live in than France.
KittenInABox 2y ago
> The education of students was also more egalitarian than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were admitted and trained. This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit.
Log_out_ 2y ago
Nowadays various religion like paradigmas have returned to sabotage scientific progress. Some are obvious,other less so.the biggest though in my opinion are the "academia has to enulate a company" and the progressive paradigm. Just hand money to individials/groups whos papers changed the world. If they want to buy services from a institution,thats their thing.

openrisk 2y ago

You are assuming a causal relation direct link between underlying factors and outcomes. It may well be that if Gottingen didn't exist some other place would have been the epicenter of a scientific revolution that was ripe to happen. One would then try to figure out what made that place special.

booleandilemma 2y ago
But if some other place had been the epicenter of a scientific revolution would Gottingen have prevented that? Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things independently? We could ask, why only Gottingen?
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas discovering things We did. Göttingen was an important place, but not the epicenter of math. Mathematicians were working all over the globe from China to India, Russia to Britain, America and Germany. Just to mention one of the maybe most gifted people of that period in the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan, people are literally still going through his work and finding novel things. It's just that we're much better story tellers when it comes to some regions of the world. If you went by movies and biographies you'd think Alan Turing did half of all computer science, who remembers Konrad Zuse? That's one area where Germany routinely gets snubbed in the public imagination.

readthenotes1 2y ago

It is actually also seeming to be asking the wrong question. Not why Göttingen, but why Germany. The universe may have been a natural attractor like big universities everywhere, but if the country surrounding it were impoverished mentally, it would not have much to attract.

baumschubser 2y ago
One answer given at the time by Heinrich Heine was that Germany didn’t have the revolution that put the new bourgeois class in power (like in France). Therefore censorship, political repression and the dead end of many „German“ micro states meant that philosophy and other disciplines where a way to work on the topics of the new age without getting in conflict with the extraordinary dimension of political backwardness. You could say England is the proof that it does not have to be that way, but they where pioneering capitalist economy, so that’s another case. Heinrich Heine hated Göttingen btw.

Goettingenknowr 2y ago

There were plenty of accomplished mathematicians before Hilbert. But the real golden age of Göttingen math and physics was due to a large recruitment effort led by David Hilbert. After realizing some early success in his recruitment effort, the reputation of Göttingen as the place to be for math and physics grew more organically.

j7ake 2y ago
It shows you how valuable it is to have these superstars in your institute. Hiring One hilbert is worth more than hiring a thousand median scientists, and way cheaper too!
- throwawaydummy 2y ago
  > This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of singular merit. (from a comment above) Idk much about math or anything would love to make it to AGI that can tell me which opinion is correct when reading HN
jan_Inkepa 2y ago
I read a bunch of Hilbert's letters once, thinking it would be an interesting window into a significant mind. It was 90% departmental politics - not really the cynical kind: he was really concerned with getting good mathematicians jobs (in Göttingen or elsewhere). And you get to watch him observe all his efforts come to naught as the German political situation goes nuts building up to the Second World War, and employment restrictions are added, people flee, etc. .
Jipazgqmnm 2y ago
That is just partially true. Hilbert was essential but "just" one factor amongst others. For example, there was also Felix Klein (who brought Hilbert to Göttingen) who was more on the teaching side. He even designed the house from the ground up in a way that he thought would be optimal for teaching and working together. There is a really good article by Norbert Schappacher called "Das Mathematische Institut der Universität Göttingen im Nationalsozialismus" or "The Mathematical Institute of the University of Göttingen under National Socialism" https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_files/GoeNS.pdf https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_file... You can DeepL it. Here is just the first paragraph: Göttingen has been a name in the mathematical world since Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). However, from the end of the 19th century until the National Socialists seized power, it was for many the center of the mathematical world, and in this respect it outstripped the traditional centers of interest: Paris and Berlin was above all the joint work of David Hilbert (1862–1943) and Felix Klein (1849–1925), around whom an increasingly important mathematical institute was formed. Hilbert's role was on the side of creative mathematical research, which he pursued with complete openness to all possible new ideas and with a versatility not seen since Gauss. Felix Klein, on the other hand, was above all an exceptionally successful organizer and academic teacher in Göttingen – four years before his appointment to Göttingen, a health breakdown had ended the period of his most original mathematical research. It goes into great detail from the pre-war to the post-war era. In addition, mathematics and physics were very much intertwined in those days - one inspired the other. And Göttingen was essentially a village - everyone knew everyone. They would meet up in a bar in the evening and speak about whats on their mind. That way, there was also a regular get-together with the local industry. For example Robert Wichard Pohl, head of the 1st physics institute (called "a patriarch of physics" or "The good Lord"), Gustav Tammann, head of the institute for physical chemistry, and the heads of Ruhstrat (a local company specialized in developing and manufacturing high-temperature industrial furnaces, transformers, etc.) regularly met. Pohl wanted to have a furnace for what was later called the Czochralski method (creating pure crystals) and Ruhstrat built the stuff. Or in 1894, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Prof. Walter Nernst, Ruhstrat created the adjustable sliding resistor, the basis for adjusting and changing resistances as well as current and voltage. They supplied the first private homes and businesses in Göttingen with electricity using electrical block stations and developed the electricity meter. Lots of aspects came together to thrive, not just Hilbert. P.S. Fun fact: Ernst (or Adolf?) Ruhstrat had the first car in town and later sold it to Tammann.

jackcosgrove 2y ago

I'll venture a couple guesses. 1) Humboldt's university reforms creating graduate education and research universities. This doesn't explain the seed of German intellectual activity as it was a relatively late development, but it does explain the institutionalization of German intellectual activity. As to the seed... 2) German was the language with the most literate speakers in Europe during the Enlightenment. For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions, and Germans were the most numerous of the Protestant cultural-linguistic groups.

LtWorf 2y ago
Sources?
- Someone 2y ago
  For the “For a few centuries after the Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions” claim, the map in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enlightenment#Literacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enligh... supports that claim. It mentions ten countries. The four most literate were largely Protestant, the six least literate largely Catholic.
  - playingalong 2y ago
    The map in the link is strange. Shows 21st century countries while it pertains to times a few hundred years ago. This doesn't convey the trust.

Merrill 2y ago

It's not clear whether it is desirable to build a new Göttingen. Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits. "Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture" https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geometric-langlands-conjecture-20240719/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geom... is an interesting article that describes the multi-year effort to obtain this important result. The final proof has nine authors affiliated with seven institutions: Denis Gaitsgory, Max Planck Institute; Sam Raskin and Joakim Færgeman, Yale University; Dima Arinkin, University of Wisconsin; Nick Rozenblyum, University of Toronto; Dario Beraldo, University College London; Lin Chen, Tsinghua University; Justin Campbell and Kevin Lin, University of Chicago.

noch 2y ago
> Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other than temporarily for conferences and visits. Lmao. Only someone who has never been a part of a high performance team with excellent mentors available in person throughout the day, can possibly believe this. Alternatively, try this sentence: "Communications and travel may have largely obviated the advantages of a married couple living together in one place to raise a family."
- unserioustubes 2y ago
  [dead]
- neaanopri 2y ago
  Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX
  - noch 2y ago
    > Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math can all be in LaTeX Sex and LaTex! I dig it!
  - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 2y ago

I think you're mixing the question of what creates great mathematics department and what makes a region generally interesting (plus the article actually answers all those questions well as other commenters note). Germany has many great mathematicians at present. Just by expanding population and budgets, it probably has more great mathematicians than in the Göttingen days. These mathematicians are not as famous as the Göttingeners of the 1920s, however, fundamentally because earlier mathematicians laid the foundation of the field and later researchers basically have built on those foundations and can't claim the same glory. As to post-war Germany being boring - I'd assume but it seem neither here nor there.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

chromanoid 2y ago

Göttingen is still a top 200 university, and as far as I remember a talk by Jens Frahm has the highest density of living Nobel Laureates. After the war a famous French singer made a song about Göttingen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk And I think she sings of a left leaning free spirit that bloomed again after the war very soon. Academic lifestyle and a focus on the strife for knowledge are still substantial cultural and economic pillars of Göttingen.

vinnyvichy 2y ago
I was thinking the divide in teutonic culture is not north and south but diagonal. Too far east and too far south they get trigger happy, Schwabians just optimally arrogant, Hamburgers are too nice.. Draw a line that passes thru Ulm & Goettingen, wide enough to contain also ___ TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_sanction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_sanction
Jipazgqmnm 2y ago
Indeed. Hans-Gunther Klein, the then director of the Junges Theater Göttingen, had seen the famous French chansonnière Barbara at a concert in early 1964 and invited her to perform in Göttingen. Due to her life story and her own escape from the Nazis, she initially declined the invitation, but then reluctantly accepted it the following day. She demanded that a grand piano be provided for her performance. When she arrived at the theater on July 4, 1964, however, she found a baby grand piano on the stage. Barbara was extremely annoyed and categorically refused to give the concert. It seemed impossible to fulfill her request, although Hans-Gunther Klein tried everything. In the end, however, a grand piano was procured, which an old lady had made available and which ten students carried through the city. Despite the artist's initial displeasure and the two-hour delay before the concert began, Barbara was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience, which greatly impressed her. Due to the great success of her first appearance and the unexpectedly warm atmosphere in the city, she extended her engagement by a week. On the afternoon before her last concert, she summarized the impressions she had gathered over the past few days, which had been unexpectedly positive, in the rough version of the chanson Göttingen, which she wrote in the garden of the Junges Theater, and performed it (not yet fully formulated and with a different melody) that same evening. The success of the chanson was sudden and overwhelming. She then returned to Paris, where she completed the lyrics and composition. The Junges Theater at that time was housed in the house of the current Lumiere cinema.