A former student remembering Professor C. T. Ionescu Tulcea and the period when he taught mathematics in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Bucharest

Abstract

I was one of the students of Professor Cassius Tocqueville Ionescu Tulcea in his last years of teaching at the University of Bucharest, during the first semester of my fifth year (1956-1957). The course was on Orthogonal Series, in fact it was more linked to his monograph on Hilbert Spaces [6], published in 1956, with a Note by I. Barbalat. On my copy there is a handwritten note “May 27, 1956. The IVth Congress of the Romanian Mathematicians”, a congress of a historical importance, mainly due to the contribution of Professor Simion Stoilow. I spent my years as a student during a very difficult period of time. After Stalin’s death in March 1953, the ground began to shift and in October of 1956 we had a revolution in Hungary which, in the absence of an attitude from the West, ended in a brutal repression. We were all the more fortunate to have then excellent teachers. One of those remarkable teachers whose memory is so dear to me and to whom I am so grateful was professor C.T. Ionescu Tulcea. I also recall with feelings of gratitude my other professors, Miron Nicolescu (1903 1975), Solomon Marcus, Gr. C. Moisil (19061973), Dan Barbilian (1895-1961), Mihail Benado (1920-?). I had the privilege to have very fine colleagues such as Sergiu Rudeanu, Alexandra Bagdasar Bellow, Kostache Teleman, Ion Cuculescu, presently a member of the Romanian Academy, Aldo Lazar, Ion Zamfirescu, Paul Voiculescu who graduated with a thesis supervised by Professor C. T. Ionescu Tulcea, Horia Banea, Mariuca Halalau, Laura Constantinescu who all graduated with me in 1957. Also Valentin Poenaru, Gheorghe Gussi, Ciprian Foias, Nicu Boboc who graduated one year earlier than me. During those years scientific criteria were consistently observed. Our mathematical education was of high quality and it was not elitist. For those years one should mention an increase of interest for partial ordering, e.g., the doctoral thesis of Professor Solomon Marcus “Monotone functions for two variables”in 1956, and the paper of Mihail Benado on multilatices (multistructures) in 1953. I mention below a few courses taught during those years. They are somewhat