Szeged in 1934

Abstract

1. WHY SZEGED? The year 1933 was dreary and dismal for most people. This was precisely at the end of my studies for the doctorate. By some miracle, I was spared unemployment. I was awarded National Research Council Fellowship, for year of postdoctoral study at Harvard University under the guidance of Marshall Stone. There were four N.R.C. fellows at Harvard: Magnus Hestenes, David Nathan, Deane Montgomery, and me. Montgomery and I formed seminar, to lecture each other on the material in Oswald Veblen's Analysis Situs. We were joined by Norman Steenrod, who shone by his determination to find out what was really going on. These fellowships had been severely cut, both in number and in stipend. Nevertheless, even with the reduced stipend of $1,600 for twelve months, I managed to live in Boston like Bohemian, dividing my activities between wooing the recalcitrant muse of mathematics and indulging in the follies of youth: drinking beer, going to symphony concerts, and jogging in the park. This extra year at Harvard was supposed to give us coat of varnish, as one of my friends put it. Whether it turned us into gentlemen or scholars is moot question. It did provide line in my curriculum vitae. Future employers were impressed. Stone told me that the two mathematicians in all the world who could be most helpful to my development were John von Neumann and Frederick Riesz. (His Hungarian name, Frigyes, became Frederick when anglicized). von Neumann's name was well known to me, of course. Of Riesz, situated at the other end of the world, I was only vaguely aware. But Stone's remark was prophetic. Stone and I agreed that my energies were best spent digging deeper into Hilbert and Banach spaces. That meant frontal attack on Stone's Colloquium Series Publication, Linear Transformations in Hilbert Space, remarkable 622-page book more often quoted than read. Stone's style has sometimes been subject to comment. It is infinitely correct but, like many of his other qualities, carried out a outrance, with some bizarre results. For example, one of his theorems (p. 590) takes two complete pages-for the statement. The last chapter of the book fills 218 pages. Stone had special sense of humor. At one of our infrequent meetings I mentioned some problems as possible candidates for research topics. About the best one of my problems, Stone said, Oh, I don't know. Somebody must have