How I Became a Mathematician

Abstract

As I am now slightly over 70, my memory is not particularly good, and some of the dates may be slightly wrong; but the facts will be essentially correct. My twin sister and I were the 7th and 8th children of my parents; four of my brothers and sisters had died before we two were born on July 26, 1903. My parents were middle class Jews, and, with all my four grandparents, came from the lower Rheinland, Prussia, Germany. My birthplace, Krefeld, not far from the Dutch border and on the western side of the river Rhein, was then a rather pretty town of about 100,000 inhabitants. The main industry in those days had to do with silk and its uses. My father and several of my uncles worked in printing and bookbinding. We had a small printing firm dealing mainly with commercial work, and my father had started at the bottom since none in our family was well to do. The printing firm lasted till the coming of the Nazis in 1933, and my only surviving brother was due to take over the firm when this happened. There was no academic tradition in our family or in those of my relatives, and it is doubtful whether I should have ended at a university if I had been in good health. We all were great readers, and we read anything we could get, without much discrimination. In those days (but not after the First World War), our home was still run on strictly orthodox Jewish lines, and we were also all good German patriots. Krefeld belonged to Prussia, was in a mainly Catholic district, and there was even then a certain amount of anti-Semitism, although more as a reminder of the past. My twin sister was very healthy, good at languages, and later an excellent business woman, but mathematics was not in her line. She had one child, but died early in the Nazi period; her husband is still alive. My brother was less intellectually inclined. He served in the First World War in France until he was very badly wounded and therefore released from the army with the Iron Cross and a promotion. He and his wife, and many more of my relatives, were put to death in German concentration camps during the Second World War. My elder sister, now over 80, is still alive. She, her husband (recently deceased), and her only daughter have been living for many years in the Netherlands. Both she and her husband were mainly interested in music. In contrast, although I can somewhat appreciate the great composers from Bach to Beethoven, I find most of the earlier and the later music mainly noise and nuisance! I have always preferred things I can see to things I can hear. My health never was good. At about 5, I became a victim of tuberculosis in my right knee. There was no good treatment in those days, and after an operation when I was about 8, the knee became stiff, the leg bent at the knee, and there was for many years an open wound. I was thus very much hindered in walking. This remained so