The New Era in American Mathematics, 1920–1950 by Karen Hunger Parshall

Author:Karen Hunger Parshall [Parshall, Karen Hunger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691235240
Google: qp9IEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0691235244
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.3. The first page of a two-page memo on “Mathematicians and Physicists whose records have been sent to American Friends Service Committee,” 2 May, 1939. (Typed Facsimile of the document in Veblen Papers, Library of Congress.)

Scherk finally arrived in the United States, but not until March 1939 and “practically penniless.”44 Despite the fact that he was “not a particularly strong or independent mathematician,” that is, despite their grading scale and Scherk’s placement on it, Weyl, Veblen, and their network worked hard to find some sort of work for him, even if they did not actively propose him for college or university posts. They were trying to uphold their principle of placing only the very best in the few academic posts available. From the by then somewhat replenished German Mathematicians’ Relief Fund, Weyl did send Scherk $150 to help him get settled, and Veblen counseled him not to look only for work in mathematics but “at least for the next months [to] be ready to make the best of whatever work you can find.”45 “At present,” Weyl insisted, “your need of making a living should prevail over all other considerations.”

Scherk took a job tutoring one of Kurt Friedrichs’s students at NYU; he graded papers for a professor at Hunter College; and he did kitchen work for the family of a Columbia University professor.46 By December 1939, though, he had landed a job at a high school in Connecticut teaching mathematics as well as French and Latin, and four months later, he had begun to find his mathematical footing, submitting a number-theoretic paper for consideration by the Annals.47 Weyl had also recommended him to Hertha Kraus of the American Friends Service Committee for a place in one of the Committee’s summer “American Seminars” designed to help émigrés hone their English and navigate American society. After the seminar’s end, Kraus reported back to Weyl that Scherk’s health had seemed so precarious that the Committee, fearing a brain tumor, had had him thoroughly examined by a Viennese neurologist in New York City. Thankfully, the doctor concluded “that Scherk’s troubles [were] largely nervous disorders, and likely to disappear if and when he has satisfactory work in the only line he is interested in, mathematics.”48

To that end, Kraus had “arranged with Yale University to have [Scherk] accepted as an honorary fellow in mathematics and as a member of our small Yale Friends University Center, which provides social contacts and guidance for honorary fellows.” While at Yale, he would live and have almost all of his meals in a dormitory, but, as Kraus explained, he would still need $45.00 a month “to get along,” and she hoped that she could count on Weyl’s fund to help “make the Yale venture possible.” “He is really quite a pathetic case,” Kraus confided, “ … and, after several years of fruitless struggle in exile, very much at the end of his rope.”

Although it is not clear exactly how Scherk’s year-long stay in New Haven was paid for—Weyl had written

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