Abstract
Between 1935 and 1941, “The Scottish Book” – a collection of almost 200 mathematical problems – was compiled by a group of Polish mathematicians who gathered at the Scottish Cafe in the Polish (earlier Austro-Hungarian/now Ukrainian) city of Lwow (Lemberg/Lviv) (Note: In this paper, I am using the names Lemberg, Lwow and Lviv, according to whether at the time the city was a part of Austria-Hungary, Poland or either the Soviet Union or Ukraine. Some essential history: (1) When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, the Germans crossed the whole of the country and reached as far as Lwow in the East; (2) Then they stopped and handed over the eastern section, including Lwow, to their Soviet allies (a result of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact), and retreated to the present-day Polish border; (3) Between October 1939 and May 1941, Lwow was under Soviet control. (4) In June 1941, with Germany and the Soviet Union allies no longer, the Germans ousted the Soviets from Lwow and stayed until the end of the War. (5) Lwow then became a city in the Ukrainian SSR; and (6) it is now is a part of independent Ukraine.). The Scottish Cafe had nothing to do with Scotland. It was owned by the author’s grandfather, Tomasz Zielinski. The Scottish Book and its problems survived World War II (a successor tome is being compiled and kept at the University of Wroclaw, Poland). Many members of this Lwow School of Mathematics went on to have illustrious careers and make indelible contributions to their chosen subject. This paper describes the evidence on the Scottish Book and the history of the various participants in this small but lasting component of the edifice of modern mathematics, which has been termed a “classic in mathematical thought”.
Highlights
This is an account of the brief flowering of a school of mathematics in Eastern Europe in the years between World War 1 and World War 2
The Scottish Book somehow survived the carnage of World War 2 and persists to this day as the cornerstone of a “Scottish School of Mathematics”, which has little to do with Scotland, but everything with a Café in a formerly Polish city in the Ukraine
In the literature surrounding the story of the Scottish Café, Tomasz appears at various points as a concerned proprietor, anxious that his marble-topped tables were being defaced by the scribbling mathematicians who began to drift in after the various wars receded, and as the University and Polytechnic revived
Summary
It was like an American Western of the 1890s – except that it was August 1937 in the far East of Poland: the door of the Café opened and a tall, dark stranger walked in He was over six feet tall and broad shouldered. There was a pause as everyone in the Scottish Café took a covert glance, resumed their conversations Except for those at the long table in the back, who looked up and got to their feet. Several (including Ulam and von Neumann) worked on the Manhattan Project, constructing the first atom bombs Another third stayed home – well, to be exact, they stayed in Poland by leaving their homes in Lwów and moving to Warsaw or Wroclaw. The mathematicians grew quiet as he unscrewed the cap of his pen and began to write
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