text:
"What Do You Think of Your Ol' Dad Now?"
Ted Williams had a voracious appetite, an obsession with cleanliness, and a deep aversion to annoyances of any kind. But he was also hilarious, warm, and disarming. His daughter, author of a new memoir, recalls the curious domestic life of the baseball legend.
on May 21, 2014From the book Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir by Claudia Williams. Copyright © 2014 by Claudia Williams. Published on May 13, 2014 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Richard Ben Cramer said it so very well in the June 1986 issue of Esquire: Ted Williams wanted fame, and wanted it with a pure, hot eagerness that would have been embarrassing in a smaller man. But he could not stand celebrity. This is a bitch of a line to draw in Americas dust.
Dad wanted to be The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived. He never wanted much else, and he most certainly did not want the burden of celebrity. He was never rich by the standards of todays best ballplayers. In his own words, Ive always had a way to make some money, but Ive always managed to find a way to spend it. He enjoyed the special benefits that his fame brought him, but only in their simplest form. The attention everywhere he went, the lack of privacy in public placesnone of that was to his taste.
Photo © Ted Williams Family Enterprises, Ltd.
The author and her brother, with their father, Ted Williams
As I got older I came to see how much Dad truly enjoyed the bare necessities of lifethey were the simple things he lived for. He never wanted a Mercedes, or jewelry, or fancy clothes. He loathed pretension and all other kinds of bullshit. Dad found real peace and comfort in the basics of food, shelter, and clothing. Taking care of the basics centered him and genuinely made him happy. He didnt want to worry about not having them. I dont know whether that desire grew in him as a result of being deprived in some ways during his childhood, of having lived through the era of the Great Depression, or whether he just wanted to avoid having to constantly worry about how he was going to get through tomorrow.
In all of my years with Dad, he drove either a station wagon or a Suburban. He never went for the flashy stuff. In 1952, just before he went to serve in the Korean War, the Red Sox held a Ted Williams Day at Fenway and presented Dad with a brand-new Cadillac. He thought it was prestigious. He also said he got more speeding tickets in that car than any other. Dad got rid of it rather quickly because, as he figured, the police were just looking for Cadillacs so they could nab em for speeding.
For shelter and clothing, function was always paramount over form. Dads houses were never grandiose or opulent. For a house to be his home, it only needed a functioning roof, hot water, working toilets, a kitchen, and a comfortable bed. He loved his cabin on the river in Canada as much as his two-story home in the Florida Keys. For a shirt to be his favorite, it only needed to be comfortable. Dad did not like the task of shopping. He had no patience for such a trivial activity. When he found a comfortable article of clothing, he bought a dozen. Fashion was the least of his concerns. It was customary to see Dad in the same clothes for three or four consecutive days. Dont get me wrong, they were clean each day. But comfort was king, and he saw no reason to change his look for the sake of someone else. If he had to appear at a public event and needed to be presentable, someone very persuasive, with an easy, relaxed style, had to be sent in to help him dress. Otherwise, Dad might show up wearing a 70s-style velour shirt or his favorite Hanes V-neck tee and his baggy khaki fishing pants.
As children, we would follow our father around like puppies, learning how these simple pleasures in his life worked. He had so many unique rituals that were curious and humorous all at the same time. Dad was very neat and clean, maybe to the point of being a little compulsive about it. We would sit on the bathroom sink counter and watch our father shave with his three-headed Remington shaver. He loved Aqua Velva. There were about a dozen bottles of it in his medicine cabinet. He would splash so much aftershave on his face that the cool alcohol splatter would reach us. He explained that you had to make sure you had enough to get it all over your face and neck.
You cant get enough of this stuffyou never want to smell."
There was no dabbing. More like aggressive slapping until his cheeks, neck, and chest were all pink. He probably went through a bottle a week. When he was done, hed place a towel around his neck.
You want to make sure you dont get any hair on your shoulders, he would explain.
There was nothing worse than loose hair hanging off your shoulders, he would say with a disgusted look on his face. Then he would take out this comb that looked like a horse curry comb and explain that you should brush each side of your scalp twenty-five times. It actually was a massage comb, and he would attack his scalp vigorously. After rinsing his comb, he would slick his hair back with just the wetness of his hands. Then, ever so carefully, he would step away from the towel, lifting it away as if it were a contaminated cape. He would fold it to prevent any damned dirty hairs from escaping and then chuck it to the floor, never to be touched again.
Oral hygiene may have been the most explicit lesson we learned. Dad believed in hard-bristle brushes. Didnt matter what the dentist said, the harder the better. Dad had all his teeth when he died, so he must have been doing something right. He would brush his teeth like he was mad at them. Also a counting ceremony on each side of his mouth and on all sides of his teeth. He would then stick out his tongue, hold it with a washcloth, and brush it until he gagged. The first time I heard my father brush his teeth I was concerned: It sounded like he was very sick and throwing up. I went to find my brother and told him I thought Dad was ill. I brought him to the outside of the bathroom door so that he could listen to what I had heard. My brother smiled and said, Oh, thats just Dad brushing his teeth.
And then there was the Listerine. He loved Listerineonly the original, harsh-tasting version. Someone once gave him a beautiful crystal liquor decanter. Dad was not much of a drinker, so he filled this lovely decanter with Listerine and kept it in the bathroom. Every morning hed pour a crystal glass half full of Listerine to gargle. He threw his head back for a deep gargle lasting at least a minute. I think he may have even drunk a little, just to make sure he killed every last germ. After he finally spit it out and rinsed with water, he would look at himself in the mirror, smile, cock his head slightly, point at his reflection emphatically, and then wink.
You handsome son of a bitch.
We found this very humorous. What do you think of your ol dad now? he would ask.
Thorough came to mind, for starters. My mother would tell us that Dad was the cleanest person she ever met. Coming from a nurse, that said a lot. Dad was always very conscientious about how he smelled. I cant remember my father ever smelling of body odor or having bad breath.
When we were kids he was always checking us out, asking us to give him a huff for his approval. Eventually we were all going through our morning cleaning rituals together. The first time Listerine hit my sensitive mouth I thought my mouth was on fire.
Thats good, that way you know its working, Dad would say encouragingly. You always want to be kissing sweet.
Ironically, I never saw my father kiss anyone on the lipsnever, not even Mom. He would always turn his cheek.
Photo © Ted Williams Family Enterprises, Ltd.
The author, bringing her father a rose
Of the three basic necessities, Dad loved food the most, and it held his attention like nothing else. To know Ted Williams was to know him around what my brother and I would refer to as feeding time.
He loved good food. It didnt need to be rich, sweet, or hifalutin; he wasnt interested in using his celebrity to get into five-star restaurants. He appreciated a great steak on the grill and all kinds of fish, pork, and lamb. Corn on the cob, potatoes, Swiss chard (à la Dolores), or most any kind of beans were more than sufficient to complement the meal. Dessert was best when it was simple: chocolate cake, Key lime pie, or just Oreos and cold milk. Milkshakes and root beer floats were the best treats.
His love for food was infectious. He could make you salivate with hunger over the simplest dish just by sharing his passion and enthusiasm. He might ask his guests, Dya like chicken? Yeah, well, I know this grrreat chicken place right down the road. Youre gonna love it! The visitors would be all wound up, the first ones in the car. Then Dad would take them to the local fried chicken joint, the Chicken King restaurant. They were always blatantly disappointed over the commonness of the place, but once served, they were convinced that this plain ol fried chicken was in fact the best fried chicken ever.
Spicy food was a particular passion for him. I have fond memories of my dad and grandfather, my moms dad, eating hot peppers together. My grandfather loved hot peppers, and when Dad drove up in the summer to pick us up to go to Canada, Grumpa would be waiting. Our grandfather was affectionately called Grumpa because he was often grumpy and would yell at my brother John-Henry and me in German if we did not close the front door. He was from St. Gallen, Switzerland. Our grandfather was very important to my brother and me in our upbringing, filling in as the male role model we desperately needed. Dad knew this and appreciated our grandfather. He would visit Grumpa just across the way from Moms house every time he was in town. Theyd sit at the kitchen table and together sample an assortment of Grumpas garden-grown radishes and peppers. Then Grumpa would bring out the pickled jalapeño peppers and accompanying pigs feet and headcheese. Dad thoroughly enjoyed those afternoon snacks. I think one of the reasons he loved my mothers cooking so much was that it was loaded with flavor and tons of spices, just like her father had taught her.
At restaurants, when Dad ordered a salad and the waiter came over with the pepper mill, Dad would say, Look, Im not trying to be funny, but I love pepper. Go ahead and put a lot on. The waiter would grind away as Dad kept motioning him on for a minute or more, until his salad was frosted with black grounds. Tabasco was also a staple at almost every meal. Asked once how much he enjoyed Tabasco, Dad shook the bottle into a tablespoon until it was full to the brim and downed the sauce with pleasure.
Dad believed in the medicinal properties of spice and fresh vegetables. I once saw him eat a whole baked garlic head with salad and bread. Once, while watching a baseball game, he remarked that the players needed more garlic in their diet. A garlic company heard about this and sent the team a bushel of fresh garlic.
Dad had a voracious appetite. Breakfast and dinner were the biggest meals. Lunch, snacks, and the occasional root beer float were standard ways to bridge the gap. All time was measured by the next meal, and houseguests were invited to sit and eat, come to breakfast, or stay for dinner. Feeding time acquired even more purpose when Dad threw down food challenges to find the best dish or the best cook. If he had a dish he really liked and a friend bragged about his own version, there was always a cook-off. Dad would instruct his chef just how to make his dish, and then there would be a blind tasting and voting by the family or anyone else who wanted to participate.
There were some things Dad had trouble communicating, and the more personal they were the more they grew as an unspoken anxiety in his mind. That was why he would often erupt: He just couldnt bring himself to say the simple, basic thing he wanted as soon as he wanted it. For example, when he waited too long to eat and suffered hunger pangs, he was like a bear coming out of hibernation. His patience was incredibly thin, and his anxiety increased exponentially by the minute.
Dad would hint, suggest, ask, and offer, but very seldom would he come right out and say exactly what he wanted. He was strategic in avoiding a direct question. Nothing exemplified this behavior better than feeding time. A customary exchange would go something like this:
Photo © Ted Williams Family Enterprises, Ltd.
The author's brother with their father in the dugout at Fenway before an old timers game, in 1982
Dad: Do you want something to eat? [kindly offering]
Me: No, Im good, thank you. [being honest, understanding it was a polite offer]
Dad: Youre not hungry?
Me: No, not reallyyou, Dad? [offering him the opportunity to express himself]
Dad: Nope. I just thought you might want something to eat. [long pause] When do you want to eat?
Me: Probably not for a while.
Dad: Well, we better start thinking about when the hell we want to eat!
Me: How about 5:30? [hearing agitation in his voice as my first alarm]
Dad: What time is it now?
Me: Four. [hearing him grumble] Do you want to have a snack?
Dad: No... do you?
Me: [hearing the hope in his voice] Dad, you sound hungry. Are you hungry?
Dad: I could eat if you eat.
Me: Want me to make you something?
Dad: Ill share whatever you make.
Me: Im not really hungry, Dad.
Dad: OKAY, FINE. FUCK IT! IM NOT HUNGRY!
Bam! There it was. Instead of just asking for something to eat because he was hungry, he would get himself all worked up to the point where he got mad and denied himself gratification, just because no one would join him in a snack. He was all right if someone ate with him, because then he didnt feel like the only one eating or needing to have food prepared. It was as if it were taboo to be hungry when no one else wasbut instead of verbalizing that feeling, he would end up exploding.
I learned pretty quickly to get ready with snacks when it was near feeding time and share whatever nourishment I had readily available. Dad was so easy to please. He loved to sit and share food. He would smile and practically giggle as he enjoyed something tasty with you. It was pure heaven if you were enjoying it with him too.
This is goood, isnt it? Here, have some more. Youre not eating. You gotta eat this. Isnt it grrreeeat!
One Christmas, not knowing what else to get my dad, I bought a collectors tin of Oreo cookies. It may have been one of the best gifts I ever gave him. He proudly lifted the tin and pointed firmly. Now, this is a great gift. Get the milk! We sat and probably ate over a dozen cookies each, chatting about how long we needed to let them soak and how important it was that the milk be ice cold. Something so simple turned out to be a memorable moment.
As a family, we all enjoyed privacy. We came to respect Dads lack of tolerance for annoyance of any kind. The fewer interruptions and irritations there were the better our time together was. He could keep a few requests for autographs on the street in perspective, and even appreciate them. But interruptions during dinner at home, especially dinner with us kids, were almost intolerable. It became Dads ritual around 6:00 p.m. to rip the phone off the hook to be certain mealtime would not be interrupted. Because God help us all if the phone rang during feeding time.
Such was the case one Christmas break when I was about eight or nine and John-Henry and I were with Dad in Islamorada. Everything was calm that evening as we were waiting for dinner. Dad was watching TV; John-Henry and I were upstairs devising a plan to meet up later with our local friends. Dad seemed disappointed when we wanted to visit our friends rather than hang out with him, so we learned that it couldnt be our idea or at our request. We had to encourage our friends to take the initiative and call to ask permission. Silently, John-Henry crept downstairs to put the phone back on the hook, then raced back upstairs so that he could call his fishing friend Richard. It was a perfect plan. We were out of Dads earshot and could arrange a secret evening with friends without anyone getting upset.
While my brother was scheming over the details with Richardwhose parents would pick us up, when and how they should arrive, and what we could doI wandered off to the privacy of Dads bathroom to use the toilet. After doing my business, I effectively made a catchers mitt out of toilet paper, wiped thoroughly, and flushed the glove down with a couple of tries. I trotted back to my brother to hear the rendezvous details.
Here, talk to Jenny, she wants you to come over too, he said. I have to go to the bathroom. As I talked to Richards sister, my brother went to Dads bathroom too.
Suddenly Dad was yelling for us from downstairs. I hung up and ran down to see my father. What are you doing? Dad asked.
Nothing. Just watching TV.
Well, get ready for dinner. Were going to eat soon. Old Teddy Ballgame has a meal for you!
Off I went upstairs to tell John-Henry. I found him in Dads bathroom frantically looking for a plunger. Simultaneously we looked with immense fear at the rising tide within the bowl.
Like two complete novices, my brother and I prayed. We tried to will the water to stay below the rim of the toilet. Despite our best efforts, God was not listening and the water continued to rise. It was relentless, bringing with it bodily deposits and pieces of my baseball mitt. Then it overflowed and hit the floor. Oh God! We begged, pleaded, and grabbed towels all at the same time. The water kept coming, and we were soon running out of towels. My brother condemned me to the task of hand-delivering the evidence of my guilt to the other toilet. I made several trips with my hands full of soggy toilet paper to the other upstairs bathroom.
We were two little kids scared to death that we would make our father angry. In the back of our minds we could see the perfect storm coming. Like three runaway trains with a common destination, three situations guaranteed to set him off were coming together in the worst way: an indoor flash flood caused by a plugged toilet; a phone that was put back on the hook against Dads wishes; and, at the center of it all, the hungry Beastas we called himat feeding time. We were done for.
John-Henry, Claudia, DINNER!
We made a plan as we scrubbed our hands. We would amble down the stairs as if nothing had happened and nothing was wrong. Then, after dinner, we would find the plunger and fix the toilet. It was the only way out of this mess.
As we got to the bottom of the stairs, Dad got up from his chair and walked past the phone. As he passed through the hall that ran under his bathroom, drip, drip, went the water from above.
Goddamn it! What in Christs name! We have a goddamned leak somewhere!
Ring! Ring! went the telephone on the wall, which seemed to ring louder than it had ever rung before.
Jesus fucking Christ, I took this goddamned thing off the hook!
The Beast answered the phone with great intensity. HELLO? WHOISIT?
Hi, this is Richard. Can John-Henry come over?
Then Dad grabbed the whole apparatus, tore it off the wall, and flung it across the living room. My brother and I just stood there, like two fawns in the lights of the runaway train. As Dad stared at the hole in the wall he had just created, we all realized that there would be no calling the plumber.
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43. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966–1967)
60 min | Action, Adventure
This spinoff from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." features the adventures of sexy spy April Dancer, who works for an international agency called the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement... See full summary »
Stars: Stefanie Powers, Noel Harrison, Leo G. Carroll, Randy Kirby
44. Crazy Like a Fox (1984–1986)
60 min | Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Rough-and-tumble private Investigator Harry Fox, Sr. solves crimes with the reluctant help of his son, respected San Francisco lawyer Harrison Fox, Jr.
Creators: John Baskin, Frank Cardea, George Schenck, Roger Shulman | Stars: Jack Warden, John Rubinstein, Penny Peyser, Robby Kiger
45. Father Murphy (1981–1983)
48 min | Drama, Family, Western
Creator: Michael Landon | Stars: Merlin Olsen, Katherine Cannon, Timothy Gibbs, Moses Gunn
46. The Dove (1974)
PG | 105 min | Drama, Romance
The true story of a 16 year old (Robin Lee Graham, played by Joseph Bottoms) who sailed alone around the world in a 23 foot sloop named "The Dove". On his journey he meets and falls in love... See full summary »
Writers: Robin Lee Graham, Derek Gill, Peter S. Beagle, Adam Kennedy | Director: Charles Jarrott | Stars: Joseph Bottoms, Deborah Raffin, John McLiam, Dabney Coleman
47. Bridget Loves Bernie (1972–1973)
30 min | Comedy
The daily struggles of two newlyweds: rich Catholic Bridget and Jewish cabbie Bernie.
Creator: Bernard Slade | Stars: David Birney, Meredith Baxter, Harold J. Stone, Bibi Osterwald
48. Judd for the Defense (1967–1969)
60 min | Crime, Drama
High-priced Houston TX lawyer Clinton Judd and his assistant Ben defend people all over the country. The cases often reflected then-current real-life ones (e.g., antiwar protesters).
Creator: Paul Monash | Stars: Carl Betz, Stephen Young, Walter Brooke, John Dehner
49. The Young Rebels (1970–1971)
60 min | Adventure
This short-lived series tried to apply the ideals of the '60s youth culture to the American Revolution. Jeremy Larkin, Isak Poole, Henry Abington and Elizabeth Coates were members of "the ... See full summary »
Creator: Peter Gayle | Stars: Richard Ely, Louis Gossett Jr., Alex Henteloff, Hilary Thompson
50. Death Race (1973 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 90 min | Action, Drama, War
In the North African desert in World War II, a damaged American fighter plane that is unable to take off tries to evade and destroy a pursuing Nazi tank.
Writer: Charles Kuenstle | Director: David Lowell Rich | Stars: Lloyd Bridges, Roy Thinnes, Eric Braeden, Doug McClure

subset: commoncrawl


text:
15–19 December 2014
San Francisco Marriott Marquis
2nd Floor, Foothill Rooms D and E
San Francisco, California, USA
Meeting space for groups working on arctic research and science education planning activities is available for use by appointment during the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This space is provided by the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) to encourage scientific collaboration and to facilitate face-to-face meetings of opportunity.
Scheduling priority is given to groups related to NSF-funded programs. A list of planned meetings and any remaining space is available on the room schedules above.
This year, we also developed a list of Arctic-related sessions as a tool to help attendees of AGU 2014 find Arctic-related sessions, talks and posters.
For more information about the Arctic Community Meeting Room or to request space, contact judy [at] arcus [dot] org (Judy Fahnestock), ARCUS.


text:
The Princeton
Mathematics Community in the 1930s
Transcript Number 40 (PMC40)
© The Trustees of Princeton University, 1985
This is an interview of Albert Tucker on 9 April 1979. The interviewer is Albert Lewis, archivist, University of Texas.
Lewis: Before we really get into things, there are questions that I have as an historian about papers. You talked about the departmental papers. They're still in some basement there?
Tucker: Yes.
Lewis: Which is good news, because I just today talked with Mr. [Earle] Coleman, the archivist, and of course he has nothing of the departmental records. So that's very nice to hear. By the way, he said that he would like to have a copy of anything that you produced to put in the archives. They don't have many tapes, but they will take care of them.
Tucker: Do they have facilities for copying tapes?
Lewis: Probably not. There are commercial firms that might be able to do that. I know at Austin if you have a television film, they have facilities to do it. Perhaps Princeton does, I don't know.
But the question I wanted to ask as a historian is about the papers of some of these individuals, because people have asked me to ask you. For example, I know people who are anxious to find some of [James W.] Alexander's letters and manuscripts. Would you have any idea?
Tucker: Well, I had an inquiry from someone at Amherst.
Lewis: Yes, that's one of the people who talked to me.
Tucker: He actually came to see me, and I had a very pleasant chat with him. This was before I had the tape recorder. In my office over at Fine Hall. The only lead that I was able to suggest was his family. Last summer Alexander's daughter rented a neighbor's house here, and we saw her around. It was not until after she had left that Professor [Stanley] Howard next door just happened to remark, "You know that was J.W. Alexander's daughter who was in that house." These houses around here, there are eleven of them, and in all of them are retired members of the faculty or widows. I'm actually the youngest of the householders around here. We're a corporation. Princeton University Faculty Housing Corporation.
Lewis: How long have you lived in this house?
Tucker: I've lived here since 1970. But the house has existed since 1954. It was occupied earlier by a professor of geology, Paul McClintock, who died in 1970. Lefschetz moved into the house down here at 11 Lake Lane in 1954. He had retired from the University in 1953. They let him stay on in the rented house he had for a year until that house was finished, and then he lived there. His widow died just last September. So the house is now vacant. It has not yet been reoccupied.
Lewis: I see. We'll get back to Alexander. Did the Amherst person succeed?
Tucker: He got in touch with the daughter, or at least obtained information on how to get in touch with the daughter and was going to do that, but I have not heard at all as to with what results.
Alexander in his later years was pretty much a recluse. He had independent means. He came from an old Princeton family. There is Alexander Street, Alexander Hall, 'Alexander' all over Princeton. I think a grandfather of his was once the president of the Princeton Theological Seminary. He's the only person I know of who held four degrees from Princeton. Bachelor's, master's, Ph.D., and Honorary Doctor of Science, which was awarded him in 1946 at the time of the Princeton Bicentennial. He was my professor when I was a graduate student at the University. I had great admiration for him, but realized at that time that he was quite different from the run of the mill professor because he had a nice home over in the west end of town. Graduate students were invited to drop in for Sunday afternoon tea there. There were servants in the home, you know. It was very clearly a home of affluence.
Alexander traveled a great deal. He was a remarkable mountain climber. He had many first climbs to his credit in the Alps and also in the Rockies. My good friend Don Spencer, who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, said that he was acquainted with the name of Alexander, in 'Alexander's Chimney', long before he knew that Alexander was a mathematician, not just a celebrated mountain climber.
Alexander went, as I told you, to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1933, from the University. But even at the University he had taught only part time and accepted only a half salary. At the Institute he started out on a half salary, but after a few years he asked to be relieved of his professorship, and he was made a so-called permanent member with no stipend. He had an office at the Institute which he came to from time to time, but he really didn't have very much to do with mathematicians.
In 1953 when Lefschetz retired and we had a symposium in Lefschetz's honor, I called up Alexander and gave him a special invitation to attend as much of the thing as possible, but to please come if he would to the dinner when we were going to make the presentation to Lefschetz. I knew that Lefschetz had a special regard for Alexander. He felt that it was Alexander who had become aware of his work and had been the one who had insisted on Lefschetz being brought to Princeton from the University of Kansas, where he was.
Lewis: That's interesting.
Tucker: At the same time, Lefschetz hated Veblen, but he felt that Alexander had been his friend and that it was through Alexander that he had become recognized, at least as far as American mathematics was concerned. So Alexander said, "Well, I would like to come. But I don't go anywhere where there's a crowd." Now I suppose ... there's a word for this, agoraphobia, the fear of crowds?
Lewis: Yes.
Tucker: And he said, "Let me think about it." He said, "I want to come. Then he called about a week beforehand. I didn't talk to him myself. He simply left a message, and it was sorry, he couldn't come.
Now on one occasion after that he did come to Fine Hall, the old Fine Hall. My colleague Ralph Fox had worked very much in things that Alexander had worked in, especially in the theory of knots, which is something that Alexander made important contributions to. And Fox had written a letter to Alexanderhe knew Alexander lived here in Princetonasking him for some bibliographical information. Weeks went by, and he had no answer. Finally one day Alexander showed up at Fine Hall asking for Fox. He had come to give Fox the information word of mouth rather than by writing him a letter. That was the only time after 1950 that anyone that I knew of saw him. He died along about 1970. Now, I have made inquiries because many people are interested. I had an inquiry from somebody in England.
Lewis: Yes, I know this person too.
Tucker: His inquiry didn't come directly to me, but it came finallyI'm sort of the final place where these things come. I wrote to him that I did not know of any organized files of Alexander. It's a great pity if there are none, because in his younger days Alexander kept files, and most of the papers he wrote he never published. In a topology seminar in the 1930s some young post-doctoral mathematician would talk about something, and Alexander would be present. When it came time for questions at the end, Alexander would say to the speaker, "Now, have you applied your technique to such and such a question?" Of course the young man, who had just barely done what he had done, would say No, he didn't know what that would yield. Then sort of half talking to himself, Alexander would say, "Oh, I remember that one time I got as far as you did, but I felt that unless I could do so and so that it wasn't worth publishing." And the poor young man. But Alexander didn't mean it that way; it was just his regret that this young man had not climbed the mountain.
He was a very kindly and courtly person. He was very much at home in France, and Chemonix was his favorite place to go summers mountain climbing and for the sort of haughty French society that went on there. His wife was French and quite socially inclined.
Lewis: You mentioned that you are really talking about the Princeton school of topologists. I'm not sure, you have a colloquium publication?
Tucker: Not 1. Lefschetz has two colloquium publications. The first one simply called Topology, and indeed that's the origin of the word topology. Before that it had been called analysis situs. Veblen had written a colloquium publication around 1920 with the title Analysis Situs. So when Lefschetz was writing a colloquium publication he felt that he had to get another name for it. He would say, "I like snappy titles." Even though his background was French he went to the German where [Johann] Listing had written a bookListing was a student of Gauss and a contemporary of Riemannon "Topologie". So in German the word 'Topologie' was to some extent established. Lefschetz decided to turn that into an English word, 'topology', and use that as the title of his colloquium volume which was published around 1931. I've never seen anything catch on as fast as that did. Of course it's fairly obvious. You know, you have 'topology', 'topological', 'topologist', and so on. Try to do that with 'analysis situs'.
Lewis: I wanted to get your reaction to R.L. Moore.
Tucker: The infamous or famous Robert Lee Moore. He was working in analysis situs until Lefschetz introduced the term topology, and then he proceeded very reluctantly to adopt it.
Lewis: Even in his colloquium publication in 1932 he calls it point-set theory. I think he must still have had a reluctance to call it topology.
Tucker: Oh yes.
Lewis: He never at Texas referred to it as topology in the course descriptions.
Tucker: I see.
Lewis: It was "point-set theory".
Tucker: Of course he disowned some of his students, like R.L. Wilder, but G.T. Whyburn and others of his students certainly adopted the term topology, and as far as I knew Whyburn never fell from grace.
Lewis: I'm surprised you would say Wilder did as well.
Tucker: Oh, I have this directly from Wilder. Wilder held a Guggenheim Fellowship at Austin in the year 1940-41. He has told me that in that year that he was at Austin, R.L. Moore did not at any time talk mathematics with him. Moore did not invite Wilder to give a talk; he completely ostracized Wilder mathematically. At the same time Mr. and Mrs. Moore would have the Wilders to dinner at their place and be very friendly with them socially, but Wilder told me that he was cut off as far as mathematics was concerned.
Lewis: Well, that's interesting.
Tucker: I visited Austin in January 1941. There had been a meeting at the American Mathematical Society at Baton Rouge, and from there I went on to Austin. I had a friend at that time at Austin by the name of E.W. Titt. I knew R.L. Wilder, and while there I called on the Wilders. As a matter of fact they had a party while I was there and invited people from both departments. I was told that that was the only occasion during that whole year that people from both departments had been at the same party. Furthermore the Moores didn't come to the party, but they asked the Wilders to bring me around to tea the following day, and I had tea with the Moores and the Wilders, but the conversation was all nonmathematical.
Lewis: Very interesting.
Tucker: Moore had been here at Princeton when he was visiting lecturer of the American Mathematical Society. That would have been sometime in the year 1931-32.
Lewis: But he was here earlier as an instructor?
Tucker: Oh yes, but that was before my time. Harry M. Gehman has told me about R.L. Moore spending an unhappy year at Princeton.
Lewis: Yes, he seemed to have something against Princeton. I'd always known that he felt that Lefschetz was competing with him sometimes for the same students, possibly Gehman. Moore knew about Gehman, who was thinking of going to study with Moore.
I didn't know about the antagonism between Veblen and Lefschetz. Veblen was officially Moore's doctoral supervisor at Chicago, so all of these connections begin to make some sense perhaps. Because Moore, I think, stayed on good terms with Veblen and Veblen did not really like Lefschetz, this would be further reason for us to separate Moore from Lefschetz.
Tucker: Well, Lefschetz was a very rough person, in the sense that he spoke rather roughly. You see I was a Ph.D. of Lefschetz; indeed I was his man Friday for years and years while he was chairman of the department. So I really regard Lefschetz as my mathematical father.
I had the very good fortune my first year as a graduate student to stand up to Lefschetz. I criticized the way he was proving something in a graduate course, and he sarcastically invited me to come to the board and prove it the way I thought it should be proved. Which I proceeded to do. I finished the proof, and then he ridiculed this performance. Class came to an end. Two days later, when there was the next class, he said that he wanted to go back over this proof that there had been criticism of. He proceeded to give exactly the proof that I had given and made quite a hit. Everybody in the class knew it was my proof, but he never admitted this in any way. Indeed I remember saying when he was getting rather oldI said this to one of my colleagues one day"You know, Lefschetz is slipping. Today I won an argument from him." I said, "Usually I have to wait several days before I'd known I won an argument with him, but today he agreed to my point. This very day."
I remember the time when Moore came to give his visiting lectures. I think just for sheer meanness, Moore scheduled the first one of his lectures for Saturday evening, and then they went on Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon. Well, Lefschetz and Alexander went around to all of the graduate students and said "This is one time when your attendance is required. You have no option. You must be there." So the room was full. Lefschetz accorded Moore the same show of interest that he would any other speaker, namely by asking questions. Also Lefschetz did this partly to sort of help the graduate students. Moore started out by writing his axioms on the board. Something like five minutes went by, and there was no sound except this chalk on the blackboard.
Well, Lefschetz was very, very restless, and he finally broke in with a question. Moore turned around slowly and looked at Lefschetz and said, "If you would read what I have written on the board, you wouldn't need to ask your question." You could tell when Lefschetz was getting angry because the back of his neck would get pink. Well, Nathan Jacobson and Bob Walker and I, who were sitting togetherwe were close friendswere right behind Lefschetz, and we decided to keep score. Lefschetz repeatedly asked questions, which we knew was just Lefschetz's style, but every one of these Moore regarded somehow as being a planned barb, so he would come back very hard in some scornful way. Alexander actually tried to pitch in and help Lefschetz a bit, but on points Moore won easily.
At the next talk Lefschetz did not say a word. Again we sat where we could watch the back of his neck, and it would get red and then the color would recede, but he didn't say a word. As far as I could judge, everybody went out of his way to show interest and concern and respect towards Moore. But afterwards at other places he went, I understand he made very caustic remarks about the way he'd been treated, especially by Professor Lefschetz, at Princeton. But this heckling was just a standard thing with Lefschetz. There's a verse that was composed back in those days by some of the young mathematicians at Princeton: "Here's to Papa, Solomon L. / Unpredictable as hell,/ When laid at last beneath the sod,/ He'll start right in and heckle god."
Lewis: What about his papers? We have to get to that eventually.
Tucker: They're all at Brown University. Brown University established a Lefschetz Center for Dynamic Systems, or something like that, in their School of Applied Mathematics. Indeed, Lefschetz served as a consultant to Brown in his later years. He worked very closely with [Joseph] LaSalle there at Brown, and he bequeathed his papers and library to Brown University.
Lewis: Do you know if these consisted mainly of letters, correspondence, or manuscripts of various kinds?
Tucker: I don't know. I have checked with Deane Montgomery at the Institute, and he says that they have no file on J.W. Alexander.
Lewis: Yes, the only papers I know of at the Institute are those of Gödel and Einstein.
Tucker: Yes.
Lewis: There may be some others I don't know of. Von Neumann's are at the Library of Congress, I think.
Tucker: Yes. They were at the Institute for a long time while [A.H.] Taub was editing the collected works. They were remarkable, because von Neumann kept almost a diary of papers. It wasn't in the form of a diary, but whenever he had an idea, he tried to write it out in a rough form. I was called in when the collected works were being edited to look at some things that had to do with the theory of games that had not appeared in any publication. The question was whether anything should be done about these. There were a couple of them that I helped to put some touches on, so that they could appear in the collected works.
Lewis: If I could change the topic a little, what about Marston Morse's papers, which also I've been asked about? I understand that Mrs. Morse is still living here in Princeton. I'm told if I call her up she would probably have be willing to talk about this matter, because she is very interested in preserving the things that he was associated with. Do you happen to know if that matter of preserving his papers has been taken up yet?
Tucker: No, I don't. She has moved to another home, so I would think that any things that were in his study at home, that something would have had to have been done about them. I would guess that Marston would have kept things pretty thoroughly. It's my estimate of his character. I think he had the feeling that anything he did was pretty important, and often it was.
Lewis: Yes, there was an interesting to-do over the Mathematical Intelligencer item about Marston Morse, a memorial article about him, which tended to take this kind of critical edge. I've forgotten who wrote it. You didn't write it?
Tucker: No.
Lewis: I didn't take it as being critical in the sense of trying to be mean or biting, but some people apparently took it this way, and there was a counter-article published to try to point out what they felt were the virtues of Marston Morse that had not been mentioned in the article. The overall impression was one of an interesting character that people would get different views about.
Tucker: Well, I had a great deal of respect for Marston. He had been my post-doctoral supervisor at Harvard in the spring of 1933, and this was when he was busy writing his Calculus of Variations in the Large. I got my Ph.D. in June of 1932. I'd been at Cambridge, England in the fall, and I arrived in Boston about December 1932. I was there until June 1932 with Marston as my supervisor.
Well, I did not get any help or inspiration from Marston. He got a great deal of help from me, because he needed to know something about the singular homology theory that Lefschetz had been developing. He needed this for certain technical purposes in his Calculus of Variations in the Large. I met with him at least once a week. He was living as a bachelor at that time in one of the new houses at Harvard, Eliot House, and I would go there at least once a week and spend two or three hours. I would attempt to tell him about what I was trying to do and get some reaction from him, but he would change the conversation to the calculus of variations in the large. He was picking my brains. Well, he acknowledges this very handsomely in the preface to Calculus of Variations in the Large. He says I contributed to his knowledge of certain matters. He also had me offered a Peirce Instructorship at Harvard. It was in competition with that Peirce Instructorship that I was offered a research instructorship at Princeton, which later became the Fine Instructorship. At that time it had no name; it was something that Eisenhart and Lefschetz cooked up.
I had no hesitation whatsoever in accepting the Princeton offer rather than the Harvard offer, because I liked the atmosphere at Princeton, particularly this Fine Hall business that was starting to develop. At that time there was no mathematics headquarters at Harvard. The various professors had offices. Birkhoff had his office in the Widener Library, Morse as I said was in Eliot House, and [Julian Lowell] Coolidge was Master at Lowell House. There was just no place where the mathematicians got together, except once a week when there was a colloquium. Otherwise there was just no mathematical life. Also I liked Lefschetz and Eisenhart better than I did Morse and Birkhoff. They were the ones that interested me of the people at Harvard.
When I told Morse that I was accepting the Princeton offer, he said, "Tucker, you're a fool. Don't you realize that if you just play hard to get, Princeton will up the ante." Well, this just shocked me. You know, I'd had a rather sheltered life. My father was a Methodist minister, and this way of looking at things that Morse showed went completely against the grain. I realize in retrospect that in a sense he was giving me very good advice, but at the time it was not advice that I could tolerate.
Then, of course, Morse came to Princeton, to the Institute for Advanced Study. In his first period here he was a bachelora very eligible bachelorand he led quite a gay social life, going to dances and such. It was a matter of considerable gossip as to who the woman was that he was taking to this dance or that dance. Then he met Louise, I think on a boat returning from Europe. That was the end of that bachelor life. Then they set up, I suppose you would call it, a mathematical salon here in Princeton, no one else I think among the Institute professors entertained in the way they did. But I always had the feeling that for any person who worked with Morse, it was always all or nothing. You either became his henchman without question, or you didn't have any lasting relations. I managed to keep on fairly good terms, that's always what I tried to do with everybody, whether I really liked them or not.
I got along beautifully with Veblen. He liked to pull strings. Even after he moved out to Fuld Hall and was no longer in Fine Hall, he would come around. He would have some thing that he was trying to get accomplished without him appearing. He liked to do things behind the scenes, but I would never take the bait. You know, I could talk to him very easily, and then I would see that he was getting ready to, in an indirect way, enlist my support in something. Because he did this in an indirect wayhe never made it in a direct requestI was always able to act as though I didn't understand what he was after. My loyalty, of course, was particularly to Lefschetz, and knowing the animosity that there was I was on my guard. But this didn't stop him from having friendly relations.
After Lefschetz became chairman of the department in 1945, for about five years Bochner never spoke to Lefschetz. Indeed, if Lefschetz came into the room where Bochner was, Bochner would leave. Any dealings that the chairman of the department had to have with Bochner were done through me.
Lewis: Did you know Mrs. Veblen, by any chance?
Tucker: Certainly, yes.
Lewis: You knew then that she was the daughter of the English physicist?
Lewis: We happen to have all of his papers at Austin, and I was intrigued with some of her letters to her father.
Tucker: Yes, I knew her.
Lewis: She seemed to keep up a good garden. She was always talking about her garden.
Tucker: The Veblens had a house over on Battle Road, which is so called because of the Princeton Battlefield, the site of the Battle of Princeton shortly following Washington's crossing of the Delaware. Indeed the Institute for Advanced Study is built over on the edge of the Battlefield Park. Well, Veblen had a house there when I first came to Princeton. It seemed rather out of town at that time. And of course that's why he liked it, because it was out of town. His hobby was cutting wood.
Lewis: I seem to have heard that. It still seems strange.
Tucker: So when it started to build up around where he lived, the Veblens got another home, and to make sure of things they bought a lot of property around there. They left that property to the township as a park. So there's something up there that's known as Veblen's Woods.
Lewis: He didn't cut all the trees down, did he?
Tucker: No, no.
Lewis: It seems to me that there was another name that you mentioned at the beginning here. I don't remember what it is now. Michael Mahoney mentioned Church, and I wouldn't have remembered him. He is still living?
Tucker: He is still living. He's still listed as being on the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles.
Lewis: Yes, that's what I thought. But he was at Princeton then?
Tucker: He was a Princeton undergraduate and graduate student. He did his Ph.D. with Veblen and was a protege of Veblen's. He did his Ph.D. along about 1926, and then he had post-doctoral fellowships; I think the first year he was at Harvard, and the next year at Goettingen and Amsterdam. He was appointed assistant professor at Princeton in 1929.
Alonzo retired early from Princeton and took a position at the University of California at Los Angeles, because the University of California at Los Angeles agreed to take responsibility for the Journal of Symbolic Logic, which had been very much his baby. I had tried very hard during my chairmanship to get Princeton University to take on responsibility for the Journal for Symbolic Logic, but I didn't succeed. But the philosophy department and mathematics department together at UCLA succeeded in persuading the administration there to underwrite the Journal for Symbolic Logic, and to that end they offered Church a professorship. He was within about two years of retirement here at Princeton. He was quite prepared to resign, but I persuaded the administration to at least retire him so that he could carry the title of professor emeritus. I felt that he was rather unique in the fact that he had been a Princeton undergraduate, a Princeton graduate student, and had spent his entire career at Princeton up to that point.
I had tremendous respect and admiration for Church. But he was completely oblivious of everything that went on in the world except in mathematical logic. He had a very devoted wife who looked after him. She unfortunately died about three years ago. I don't know who's looking after him now.
Lewis: Yes.
Tucker: He would be an ideal one to get recollections from, except for the fact that he seemed so oblivious of what was happening except in his own bailiwick. Now Bochner, who came here in 1933 from Europe, was very much interested in history, as you probably know. He has done one article that was about not particularly Princeton, but American mathematics as seen in the '30s by someone who was not American. He made comparisons between American mathematicians and European mathematicians.
Lewis: That's interesting. In the case of Church, how many years has he been at Los Angeles?
Tucker: He's been something like twelve years at UCLA.
Lewis: I'm wondering if he's considered leaving his papers and where they might be deposited. When a person who had made that kind of shift you know, been at like Princeton for a long time and then goes someplace else, it raises sometimes problems.
Tucker: We had a remarkable secretary in the mathematics department at Princeton. She was Agnes Fleming, and then her married name is Agnes Henry. She retired about six or seven years ago and with her husband went to live in the Carribean. She started with the mathematics department in 1931 at the age of 18, and was with the department until she retired. She was very much interested in people and had a quite remarkable feel for delicate situations and how to best deal with them. Perhaps Agnes could be got to make some recollections.
Lewis: Yes, there is a wealth of possible things to do here.
Tucker: As an example of something, here is a record of the bicentennial conference in mathematics, held as part of celebration of the 200th anniversary of Princeton University. There is this picture of people, and there's a list of names.
Lewis: What brought these people together here?
Tucker: They were invited.
Lewis: Do they all have some connection with Princeton or not?
Tucker: No, they were invited from all over the world. This was an international conference on mathematics.
Lewis: Very interesting, almost every one of them seems to be a well known name. I've never seen this before. This is a really interesting gathering.
Tucker: It was written up by John Tukey. He acted as the reporter for this. It was the first international mathematical conference that was held after World War II.
Some of the historical matters that I interest myself in are ones that I have a research or teaching interest in. Through this geometry course, for example, I had to find out for myself what the origin was of the conic sections.
Lewis: That's a major task.
Tucker: Well, there's only one place to start with this, if you should ever do it, and that's O. Neugebauer.
Lewis: Yes, that's just what I was just going to say. I've done it, and that's where I've started. There are still some debates, but he always seems to have the last word on the subject.
Tucker: He of course states it very cautiously as a conjecture, but to me the circumstantial evidence is very convincing that the conics came from the geometry of the sundial. I use this, as it's almost worth a week in my geometric-concepts course.
I cite this as an example of the wide interest that I have. I've been very much interested in matrices and linear algebra, and this took me to [Hermann G.] Grassmann. Here, I found the best information I could easily find was E.T. Bell's Development of Mathematics. I had known E.T. Bell. I'd been at Cal Tech for a term in the spring of 1941, just following the visit to Austin I mentioned earlier. Then from January until June I was living at the Atheneum at Cal Tech. E.T. Bell was getting his meals at the Atheneum because his wife, Toby, had died just shortly before that. He was terribly lonely and didn't want to go home to the empty house, and in the evening after dinner, I would get in conversation with him or he would get in conversation with me, and it would be peraps 1:00 in the morning when we would stop.
I learned much from these conversations that we had, about E.T. Bell and a little bit about everything else. So although E.T. Bell is regarded, certainly in terms of things like Men of Mathematics, as much more interested in color than in history, nevertheless he had a very keen appreciation of the history of algebra.
It was through Bell that I learned that Cayley was anticipated, that the things that Gibbs called dyads were the means by which Grassmann developed the notion of linear mapping. He took these primitive products and then combined them, took linear combinations of them. Of course, in forming the product of two vectors if instead of multiplying rows into columns we multiply columns into rows, this makes a matrix. Now you multiply the i-th column of the first matrix into the i-th row of the second matrix, and this creates a matrix. Now you add all of these matrices together for i ranging from 1 to how many columns there are, which is the same as the number of rows of the second matrix. This is another way of defining the product of those two matrices. Well, this is the way that Grassmann worked; somehow or other it was an attempt to stick with vectors. I think the great accomplishment of Cayley was that he was willing to think of an array as an entity. So Cayley's accomplishment was very great, but in something like 1843, 15 years before the great paper of Cayley in 1858 was done, Grassmann had been doing the same thing, accomplishing the same purpose by these primitive matrices that he hadhe called them open products or something like that, or indeterminate products.
I happened to run into Professor Gillispie a couple of years ago just when I was full of this enthusiasm of my discovery about how Grassmann had in a certain sense anticipated Cayley. I asked him, "Do you have a good article on Grassmann in the encyclopedia [The Dictionary of Scientific Biography] that you're editing?" "Well," he said, "it's strange that you should ask me that, because that was one of the articles that we had to postpone to a catchall volume, and I just recently got the proof sheets for it." He said, "Would you like to look at them?" I said, "Yes, I would." Well, I found that the article was incompetently written. Incompetent in the sense that the person who wrote it was just doing a job. He didn't have any feel at all for what he was writing about, andhe was a Germanhe had read what reference articles there were about Grassmann in German and had proceeded to write his thing. There's no reference to Gibbs. Do you know about this article?
Lewis: Yes. Go ahead. You're confirming what I think about it. I'm interested to get a mathematician's opinion about that.
Tucker: It was very inadequate. It didn't attempt to deal with Grassmann versus Hamilton, nor with Grassmann versus Cayley. I'm using 'versus' here in the sense of comparison, and I made this criticism after I simply said that I thought it was inadequate. Then Gillispie asked me for some specific criticisms that he could send to the author, so I gave specific criticism and also gave some references. You know there is just a superb paper of Gibbsit was his retiring address, I think as president of the AAAS, something like thaton multiple algebra.
Lewis: I am not acquainted with that. It must be the one where he talks about Grassmann and about the fact that he discovered that he had been anticipated by him only after he had done his own work.
Tucker: Yes, he became an expert on Grassmann.
Lewis: Well, that's fascinating.
Tucker: This too is my interest in history. When I get interested in a particular thing, then I go back to try to find the roots of it.
Lewis: Well, that's exactly why I did my dissertation about Grassmann's Ausdehnungslehre. I had been studying classical tensor analysis at Austin with Homer Craig, I don't know if you know him or not.
Tucker: I do.
Lewis: Grassmann was one of his heroes, someone whose mathematics was not recognized and who turned to philology, an interesting man as well as being one of the geniuses of the century. So when I turned to history of mathematics I was curious to see exactly how Grassmann's work fitted in. But I was a little late in the Grassmann field to get a chance to write that article. If it had been a couple of years later, I think with the connections that I had, I could have done it.
But the author of the article I met in Hamburg. He was in after he wrote the article, and he had really turned away from history of mathematics. He said he would send me the proofsheets when he got them. He was very slow about it, and the exposition in those proofsheets seemed to me to be muddled, even in the notation. But he never even asked me for any corrections or anything, so I just sort of noted them. Only this past week have I seen the printed version in that volume.
Tucker: Yes, I haven't seen the final version. All I saw was the version that I criticized, so I'm curious to see how they differ. But apparently he was working with a student, and I can imagine him using the German technique of giving it to a student to do and just passing slight judgment on it.
Tucker: As a matter of fact, that was what Gillispie conjectured.
Lewis: Did he ask you to write anything for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography?
Tucker: No, no. And there wouldn't have been any use of asking me because I write only what I absolutely have to write. I don't like writing.
Lewis: What sort of things do you absolutely have to write then?
Tucker: Things that, if I don't write, I'm afraid they'll be lost.
Lewis: Whereas biographical articles and so forth could be done by other people presumably?
Tucker: You know if a promising student would with enthusiasm attempt to do a history of Princeton mathematics or of a period, I would work with that person gladly. But when I sit down with a blank piece of paper in front of me, I think of all sorts of things that I would rather do.
Lewis: Well, yes, so do we all.
Tucker: But you can, I'm sure, tell that I'm enjoying this conversation with you greatly. So if whenever I have the opportunity to work on a personal basis with someone who is interested in the job, not just someone who is doing it to make some dollars, I would be able to spend hours and hours, and I'm interested wherever possible in trying to pin things down. I'm not going to be happy until I have pinned down exactly when it was H.S. Vandiver was here at Princeton and what he was doing.
Lewis: Yes, why he was here.
Tucker: In other words, two weeks ago I couldn't have cared less about this, but now that I know that there is somebody who is interested in the answer to this question and that I'm probably someone who can trace it down, I've looked up the son in Who's Who and he was born in 1925 I think. So if 1934 is the correct date, he would have been nine years old when he was living on Mercer Street. It's then clear that he can't be expected, just from his childhood memories, to know exactly what what his father was up to in Princeton.
Lewis: And the son has not followed his father's mathematical career.
Tucker: His son is an historian, isn't he?
Lewis: Oh yes, interested in Civil War history. He's admitted to me that he really was not aware of the stature of his father until I had cataloged his father's papers, which we had at Austin, and sent him the catalog. He then, apparently for the first time, reflected upon what his father was doing as a historical figure. That must have meant something to him, for the first time to have thought about this. I'm making a note about this question, because there is somebody still living in Austin who has a good memory for these sorts of things. That's H.J. Ettlinger.
Tucker: Oh yes, I remember him.
Lewis: He's still going strong. I think 89 years old. His wife is suffering somewhat, but he was there all of that time and knew the Vandivers well. He probably could explain that if it isn't in our papers.
Tucker: There were stormy periods, weren't there, between Vandiver and [R.L.] Moore?
Lewis: Yes. At one time apparently they did get along well, but then there are stories which I have yet to try to unravel. One of the stories has to do with the creation of the separate pure and applied mathematics departments, and that Vandiver joined the applied mathematics department.
Tucker: Ironically.
Lewis: He was rather proud of the fact that he did that, because he would have nothing to do with Moore. But exactly how this happened is still a puzzling matter. You know Lucille Whyburn of course.
Tucker: Yes.
Lewis: She's been putting a lot of effort into answering questions like that about Moore and really has not come up with any real good answer about what was happening there. The people who were there then tend not to explain things very well.
Tucker: I've heard so many stories about Moore over the years, and my feeling for being in the rival camp is, of course, often to think the worst of Moore. But I think one can say without shadow of doubt that no American mathematician trained more successful students than R.L. Moore.
Lewis: Yes, that seems to be an incontrovertible fact. It still amazes me, what he was able to do.
Tucker: But he accomplished it in a rather Spartan fashion: it was sink or swim. He had many who started as students with him that one has never heard of. Even though the number of successful students is large, perhaps his batting average wasn't so good compared with Birkhoff, say. But of course it was a case where Birkhoff was dealing with a much smaller group of students, but probably a much more highly selective group of students. Let me tell you one or two of these stories to see if you have heard them. This is one that I got from a man at Rochester, Young, ...
Lewis: Gail Young?
Tucker: Gail Young, yes. Well, Gail Young told me this story of R.L. Moore. One summer R.L. Moore was teaching in summer school, a course in real variable. Many of the students in the course were secondary-school teachers who were trying to get a master's degree or something like this. He was following the customary Moore technique of giving axioms for the real number system and then theroems to be proved by the students, and he would tuck in an occasional ringer. So the day came to take up one of these ringers. The students had been asked to prove that in any set of real numbers there is a greatest. He asked for someone to go up to the board to prove this, and there were no takers. Have you heard this story?
Lewis: No.
Tucker: Finally there was someone who was clearly a schoolmarm, who held up her hand timidly and said, "Professor Moore, I have a counterexample. And Moore beamed right at her to present her counterexample. She said, "Take a set of two real numbers. There is a greater, but there isn't a greatest."
Lewis: That's the sort of story I think Moore would delight in telling too, yes.
Tucker: And you know R.L. Moore taught at Northwestern for a year.
Lewis: Yes.
Tucker: This was just after he was married. I was told the story by [E.J.] Moulton, who was chairman of mathematics department at Northwestern. Two stories as a matter of fact. They went down to meet Moore, who had been married just a few days before that, and took him to Northwestern. Towards the end of the year word came to the chairman of the department that Moore was toting a gun. So the chairman involved Moore in casual conversation and found that, yes, he was carrying a gun and that in one of his classes, a fairly large class, he had come to feel that when his back was turned the students were making fun of him. So what he planned to do was, he was going to whirl around and catch one of the students making fun of him and he was going to shoot. Moore assured Moulton that he was an expert shot and that he would miss, but he would come close. He felt that this would end the matter. Well, the chairman of the department discovered that that room where the class met had to be renovated and that no other room was available on campus, so it was for these reasons necessary to cancel the last two or three classes in this course.
Now this is no second hand story. This is a story that I got directly from Moulton.
Lewis: I'd never heard either of them before. I must say that most of the new ones I hear are just clearly made up ones of various kinds, but there is interesting. Before I forget it, I must mention William Duren.
Tucker: Oh, I know him. Bill is a great friend of mine.
Lewis: Well, he came to visit us at Austin several weeks ago. He was travelling through Texas, the southern part, as opposed to the northern one where you got stuck, and they stopped by because Lucille Whyburn insisted that they do so. But I think they enjoyed it, talking about our mutual projects. He too has topics in the history of mathematics which he's taking on.