[HN Gopher] Gottingen was one of the most productive centers of ...
___________________________________________________________________
Gottingen was one of the most productive centers of mathematics
Author : marvinborner
Score : 102 points
Date : 2024-07-27 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Americans typically don't realize how lucky they were that World
| War II caused so much chaos in Europe and many of the best minds
| flooded to the US to kickstart the technology revolution and seed
| the economic powerhouse that it is today.
| SubjectToChange wrote:
| In terms of GPD the US was the world's largest economy well
| before _World War I_. Europe choosing to self-immolate twice
| before mid-century only served to widen the gap.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| references here are important.. it seems reductive framing to
| judge using economic units without acknowledging the
| interdependancies of real human living conditions and
| contexts, around the globe; secondly, unified national
| currency in the USA was not exactly a settled thing, not long
| before that era.. so measuring has to have some wrinkles in
| it, no?
| mighmi wrote:
| > wrinkles
|
| They go the other way.
|
| The US surpassed the UK in per capita income in the 1880s.
| However, American yeomen farmers, factory workers etc. were
| far better off than (non-UK) Europeans even in 1800, hence
| millions of Europeans immigrating. By 1913, the American
| was still earning almost twice as much as the German or
| French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_pa
| st_GDP_(P...
| WalterBright wrote:
| "The United States has been the world's largest national
| economy in terms of GDP since around 1890."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
| jahewson wrote:
| Huh? During the preceding decades the US invented the
| skyscraper, was home to the world's tallest building,
| invented the light bulb, air conditioning, the airplane,
| the supermarket, and cotton candy!
| RadixDLT wrote:
| some of the ideas were REHASHED from Europe, some were
| invented by Europe migrants
| Galanwe wrote:
| If you consider US versus any single European country yes.
|
| But we are talking about US getting brains from all over
| Europe. The combined GDP of the top 3 European countries
| (Germany, UK, France) pre WW1/2 is larger than the US, just
| as the GDP per capita of any individual European country pre
| WW1/2 is higher as well.
| slicktux wrote:
| This is something I always say and amazed by. Just imagine; all
| the knowledge of transistors, radar and nuclear fission...All
| because of World Wars and, as you mentioned, all those great
| minds that came to the USA fleeing the war. Amazing
| ck45 wrote:
| Not only the ones that fled, there was also a huge brain
| drain after world war into both US and USSR, with von Braun
| probably being the most prominent.
| mantas wrote:
| Brain drain or taking hostages?
| WalterBright wrote:
| They didn't flee the war. They fled the Nazi oppression
| before the war. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by
| Richard Rhodes.
|
| Once the war started, the borders were closed.
| blfr wrote:
| Americans were richer than even Brits back when they were still
| Brits
|
| _The American colonies led Great Britain in purchasing power
| per capita from 1700, and possibly from 1650, until 1774, even
| counting slaves in the population_
|
| _The common view that American per capita income did not
| overtake that of Britain until the start of the 20th century
| appears to be off the mark by two centuries or longer._
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w19861
| meroes wrote:
| Okay now do the 1880s.
| eska wrote:
| _even counting slaves_
|
| This remark should leave a bad taste in one's mouth.
| Obviously being immoral and exploiting human beings is an
| economic advantage. And excluding them in the census but
| benefitting from their work would be dehumanizing them even
| more.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's an advantage for those doing the exploiting, but
| overall it's an economic disadvantage, if your per capita
| statistic includes the slaves when counting heads.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Americans typically don't realize how lucky they were
|
| And, with all due respect, many people outside the US don't
| realise how lucky the best minds were that there was a stable,
| prosperous, (actively) welcoming society to bring these best
| minds out of the self-inflicted chaos of Europe.
| mantas wrote:
| Self-inflicted is a tad questionable. US played a big role in
| industrializing USSR. US also played a role in post-WWI peace
| deals which eventually lead to world war part II.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Still as a French, I think we could have done better much
| earlier. Much much earlier. The US isnt the cause of our
| problems, we are. We are even the cause of the US in the
| first place, you know, eradicating the natives, enslaving
| the africans, colonizing the land.
|
| It's ALL self-inflicted. But there was no sense of self at
| the time, what's new today is that Europe is starting,
| slowly and shakily, to see itself as a whole. At least I
| cannot imagine today ever wanting to murder a German more
| than a French. Ever.
| samatman wrote:
| > _We are even the cause of the US in the first place_
|
| We appreciate the sweet deal on the Louisiana Purchase,
| but "cause of the US" is a bit much, don't you think?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I think by "we" they meant Europe, not France.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> US also played a role in post-WWI peace deals which
| eventually lead to world war part II._
|
| Woodrow Wilson's proposed peace deal didn't involve
| imposing harsh reparations on Germany. That was the doing
| of Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France, who
| was under pressure to make Germany's reparations bill as
| large as possible as retribution for the war.
| bojan wrote:
| While that is true, it is really important to add that
| that doesn't absolve the Germans one bit.
| kibwen wrote:
| Indeed, though it's also true that the Germans should be
| held accountable for their own actions during the war,
| and not solely held responsible for WWI itself, which was
| a continent-wide effort.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's my understanding that it's a myth that reparations led
| to the economic catastrophe in interwar Germany. What's
| more important is that Germany financed WW1 by borrowing.
| (EDIT: being corrected below.)
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > What's more important is that Germany financed WW1 by
| borrowing.
|
| In such a situation, the reparations _are_ the straw that
| broke the camel 's back, and lead to an economic
| catastrophe.
| manmal wrote:
| Reparations were in the same order of magnitude as debt.
| In the end, it was 100-120B marks in debt vs 121B
| reparations (after reductions). Hard to find definitive
| numbers on debt as there are only estimations out there.
|
| https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/100933.htm
| k__ wrote:
| Most people welcoming them were probably of German descent
| themselves.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Lots of people of German descent in the US!
|
| In WW2, consider the names of the top US general in Europe
| and the top admiral in the Pacific.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Eisenhower for the general? Don't have an idea about the
| admiral.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Chester W. Nimitz
| wizardforhire wrote:
| It was a real luck of the historical draw, talk about fan
| boys adding to canon! Just in quick succession and with ample
| room for pedantry.
|
| In Europe you have the Enlightenment with all that entails.
|
| Then in America you have Ben Franklin and then the
| revolution. Later Charles E Elliot gets frustrated and tours
| the great schools in Europe only to come back to boston and
| reform Harvard. Which leads to it being emulated at Stanford.
|
| Later on the US military decides on Stanford to focus on its
| microwave research for radar setting the groundwork for what
| becomes Silicon Valley.
|
| This is probably due a more indepth essay.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| I would want to add to such an essay the important details
| about how the King of France financed US independence and
| supplied a navy to fight the King of England on behalf of
| the US.
|
| But to limit ourselves to the outcome of WWII, there isn't
| much more to say. The US actively sought these brilliant
| refugees. The latter were glad to escape to a country that
| wasn't a murderous dictatorship.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Absolutely! I really brushed over it, but for those that
| are one of the lucky 10,000...
|
| Franklin is a celebrity in his day, and is such a party
| animal and keen wit he wins over the french aristocracy.
| Leading to said fleet, which is undoubtedly the key
| factor in deciding the outcome of the revolutionary with
| their presence at the battle of Yorktown. But before all
| that he is going up down the colonies organizing
| philosophical groups, his Juntas, meeting and connecting
| the thinkers and subsequent founding fathers. While in
| addition running a printing press sowing popular dissent
| and none more influential than publishing Thomas Paine's
| pamphlets. The dude was the original punk!
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Franklin is a celebrity in his day, and is such a party
| animal and keen wit he wins over the french aristocracy.
| Leading to said fleet, which is undoubtedly the key
| factor in deciding the outcome of the revolutionary with
| their presence at the battle of Yorktown.
|
| That was probably also because he was a good diplomat. I
| have read his autobiography, which is very interesting,
| and shows how versatile he was.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Not to diminish how welcoming many Americans are either, but
| it was also in no small part with land taken from the Native
| Americans, one way or another, and labor taken from former
| slaves, one way or another. For that, the U.S. had ample room
| and ability to receive those best minds. And it's
| consequential because today, the U.S. does not have as much
| room in places with a reputation for the kind of diversity
| needed for e.g. a tech sector.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> And it's consequential because today, the U.S. does not
| have as much room in places with a reputation for the kind
| of diversity needed for e.g. a tech sector._
|
| What?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Please tell me which of the tribes that lost land to the US
| never stole land from another? Please show me a land in the
| world that never had slavery. Please tell me the origin of
| the English word "slave". Please explain what your last
| sentence means.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Check when slavery became illegal in various parts of the
| world and get off your high horse?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Oh you mean like the Middle East where it's still legal?
| Or Africa where it's still legal? When you want me to
| look up dates, should my research be when various
| American Indian tribes made it illegal?
|
| My point with all of this is that humanity in general
| sucks. We only get better due to active, willful
| improvement.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I wouldn't call it exactly "welcoming"
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-
| turned-...
| timeon wrote:
| Lot of us do. And with the defense, it is still relevant.
| mrtksn wrote:
| AFAIK it was by design, the US policy makers actively worked
| for it.
|
| Also, I think the US will have something similar in reverse:
| Some of the brightest people educated in the US are going back
| to their home countries because they have visa troubles, social
| problems or simply better opportunities due to simple things
| like housing or structural things like the industry moved
| there.
|
| Also, judging by the enormous hate stream on the social media,
| many can be nudged to move out of the US to have some piece of
| mind. After Brexit, many EU citizens choose not to stay in UK
| even if they had that option because they have become a
| political subject and since they are not desperate why stay and
| risk it?
|
| China appear to be the next frontrunner in this. Many times, if
| you venture outside of the angloshpere you find out that
| somewhere(often in China) somebody is already doing it at the
| same level or better.
|
| There probably is going to be a correction at valuations. Cool
| stuff is happening in China and elsewhere and the USA is in a
| disarray with idelogies so extreme that are not too far of from
| the stuff that ruined Europe in the first half of the 1900s.
| Coup attempts, assassination attempts, election denial,
| mainstream targeting of group of people, rich looking into
| capitalising on all that when social disparity is so large that
| some live like kings others teetering - this is not a healthy
| society.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Are you familiar with Chinese politics and society? It's not
| a great Sino melting pot.
|
| The language barrier alone will stop Chinese cultural
| hegemony.
| mrtksn wrote:
| They have a lot of problems I'm reading about but there
| will be a void with the fall of the US from global
| superpower status and that void wouldn't be left
| unattended.
|
| Anyway, with the banning of TikTok it's pretty clear to me:
| No more global companies without hard tech. The US used to
| be the bastion of free global trade but they resigned.
| Anything that relies on things like network effect or
| branding will become local because countries can enforce
| it. If some country has the engineering capacity to build a
| website where people post texts and media and others like
| and share that media then the American version wouldn't be
| allowed.
|
| Therefore, the US economy will become as powerful as having
| about 300M citizens, not as global power. China has huge
| number of citizens, they win by default as long as they can
| do the hard tech good enough and they apparently can do
| that.
|
| US embargoes only pushed them to make their local
| alternatives and they made them pretty good, whatever they
| make they make it for over a billion people.
|
| EU has a version of this problem, that is they don't have
| one large chunk of people who speak the same language and
| trade on the same rules. The trading on the same rules is
| something that EU fixed a lot but the EU is still
| fragmented and this makes EU companies anaemic because they
| can't get huge without going global. When the global trade
| is gone, the US will have the same issue(probably still
| better situation than EU but much worse than China).
| COGlory wrote:
| The US has been embargoing industries since its
| Independence. I doubt TikTok will be a remotely
| meaningful event in the history of the nation.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The things don't stay the same outside of the US,
| therefore you can't expect that doing the same thing will
| always result in the way.
|
| There are very few technologies where the US or EU has an
| edge over China. Embargoes helped a lot with that.
|
| In fact it becomes absurd, for example the EU/US/UK wants
| to make the world a better place by replacing ICE cars
| with electric ones. China builds great cars for cheap in
| huge amounts and the EU/US/UK act like Gavin Belson
| saying "I don't want to live in a world where someone
| else makes the world a better place better than we do".
| There you lose the environment claims, even if EU/US/UK
| have a point.
|
| The west lost the technological edge, the Americans like
| to claim that EU regulated too much but in the American
| case it appears that not regulated billionaires didn't
| invest in tech but resorted into rent seeking and now
| they expect the politicians to protect them from the
| Chinese companies who allegedly received unfair support
| from their governments but nonetheless they made better
| products.
|
| I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant or expert analyst in
| this stuff, I'm just pessimistic on the near future of
| humanity and the west will be the bigger losers because
| they lost the plot.
| hmmmcurious1 wrote:
| Why are you giving a free hand to China to do as it likes
| and then blame the west for following its interest? Why
| do you give China a pass at forcing any western business
| to always enter a joint enterprise with chinese firms if
| it wants to do business in China? Seeing a lot of
| critique about the blunders of the west for trying to
| have more leverage and no critique for chinese practices.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not giving China a free pass for anything. The stuff
| you are talking about paved the way for Chinese catching
| up and eventually surpassing the west but that doesn't
| change the outcome.
|
| I'm not a China fan at all, in fact I'm very concerned
| that the west will imitate China and in fact banning
| TikTok was a sign of it. Banning is the Chinese way.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| The Chinese don't support free trade. Why should the US
| support free trade with China? Why not embargo them until
| such time as China opens up? This isn't a hypocritical
| contradiction. The US supports free trade with those who
| support free trade. They suppose power imbalances with
| those who support power imbalances.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The US becomes a China with crazy politics and poor
| infrastructure then. A shitty world where the citizens
| are a commodity that can be pushed around to consume from
| companies who such at R&D but good at lobbying.
|
| Remember when the US was pro-free speech and criticised
| dictatorships for blocking social media? Kiss good bye to
| that, now it's US that blocks it. Chinese citizen
| experience, imported into the west.
|
| If Trump wins, there's Project 2025 where they plan to
| replace every government position with party loyalists -
| Just like China.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > In fact it becomes absurd, for example the EU/US/UK
| wants to make the world a better place by replacing ICE
| cars with electric ones. China builds great cars for
| cheap in huge amounts and the EU/US/UK act like Gavin
| Belson saying "I don't want to live in a world where
| someone else makes the world a better place better than
| we do".
|
| You have to think about this like a country that has the
| ability to globally project power or take part in
| regional war.
|
| The US (and Europe) doesn't want to lose its domestic
| auto manufacturing industry because it can be easily
| retooled to pump out war machines when required. [0]
|
| You don't let a foreign nation (especially an adversarial
| nation like China) destroy an industry that is critical
| during total war if you're the global hegemon, or more
| realistically, a country that may go to war in the future
| (see Volvo in Sweden, Renault in France, etc)
|
| Here's GM Defense, Ford and Chrysler have similar
| histories during the World Wars, as do auto manufacturers
| in various European countries.
|
| > World War 1: Over 90 percent of GM's truck production
| was redirected to war manufacturing during the First
| World War.
|
| > World War 2: GM began delivering war materiel as early
| as 1940 with all U.S. manufacturing plants - over 100 in
| total - eventually being converted to produce defense
| goods. Between February 10, 1942 and September 9, 1945,
| not a single passenger car for civilian use left the
| assembly line at any GM plant.
|
| [0] https://www.gmdefensellc.com/site/us/en/gm-
| defense/home/abou...
| mrtksn wrote:
| I understand the motives and I agree, however it still
| means that China makes batter cheaper EVs that supposedly
| can save the planet and suddenly saving the planet is not
| THAT important and it can wait when we play politics,
| meanwhile why don't you eat less meat and use paper
| straws?
| oezi wrote:
| A lot of people aren't as optimistic about China anymore
| because they constricted their population pyramid too
| much (one child policy), haven't reached first world
| affluence and are now facing an aging population. By 2100
| China might be down to 850m people and the US might even
| grow to 450m. Economic prowess is all that matters in the
| end, because economic power allows for military and
| industrial hegemony.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's true, they have huge demographics issues. But the
| west has them too at different extent.
|
| Also, Chinese don't operate on western principles
| therefore you can't expect same outcomes. Aging
| population issues are much different when you have enough
| production base that can sustain old people with small
| number of young people(they no longer rely on manual
| labour as much as they used to). In the west aging
| population means reduction in consumption(therefore
| reduced investments, economy slowdown etc.), but in
| countries like China that doesn't have to be a problem,
| they can simply keep producing as needed. When the west
| was preoccupied with investing all the money into
| optimising advertisement, they invested in wast
| infrastructure.
|
| I'm personally more concerned about the west than China.
| Well, of course I would be since I'm part of the west but
| yeah I think you get the point.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Cool stuff is happening in China"
|
| Not just cool stuff... I just finished listening to several
| podcasts with a Czech journalist who covered China for
| decades.
|
| He said that under Xi, the country has become superparanoid.
| Before Xi's term, people would talk to journalists mostly
| freely, and even foreign journalists would get a pass in
| their daily activities unless they touched something really
| sensitive (Falun Gong, Tibet, Uyghur unrest).
|
| After Xi came to power, the situation started to worsen,
| police started to follow journalists around and harass them
| for banal reasons, regular Chinese started being afraid of
| talking even about trivial topics. The former Overton window
| narrowed to a "compulsory vs. banned" dichotomy. One of his
| last experiences was that he went to a tomato processing
| factory to report on tomato harvest and was immediately
| arrested by the police because _how dare you record something
| about a tomato factory_.
|
| I don't think this environment is going to be particularly
| conductive to economic growth, and the latest trends seem to
| concur. China is strangling its future growth in the name of
| National Security.
| Goettingenknowr wrote:
| It seems like Americans understand just fine how much they
| benefited from post-war prosperity and the destruction of
| Europe WWII brought with it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We'd have been better off without the war, though, in
| absolute terms. So much destruction and wasted output.
| tagyro wrote:
| Now they're happy to trump up some BS about "America innovates,
| Europe regulates"
|
| It's easy to "innovate" when you're starting from a "clean
| slate".
| fsckboy wrote:
| Here's some innovative American peanut butter to go with your
| pure jelly:
|
| We didn't trump up anything about American individualism,
| ingenuity and innovation. Rather, a visiting European, de
| Toqueville, wrote about it extensively as early as 1835.
|
| De la democratie en Amerique
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
|
| He also said
|
| _"...I have nowhere seen women occupying a loftier position;
| and if I were asked, ... to what the singular prosperity and
| growing strength of that people ought mainly to be
| attributed, I should reply,--to the superiority of their
| women. "_
|
| "Tocqueville noted that religion played a leading role in
| American life in the 1830s, due to its being constitutionally
| separated from government. Far from objecting to this
| situation, he observed that Americans found this
| disestablishment quite satisfactory, in contrast to France,
| with its outright antagonism between avowedly religious
| people and supporters of democracy."
| tagyro wrote:
| no jelly here
|
| Happy to have my privacy, no company snooping on me
|
| 's all good, man :)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "It's easy to "innovate" when you're starting from a "clean
| slate"."
|
| This is an interesting remark. It seems that countries like
| Estonia or Poland, which significantly overhauled their
| systems in the 1990s, are more innovative than Italy, Germany
| or France, whose systems are much older and somewhat ossified
| / clogged with bureaucracy.
|
| But the US system is even older, and it still produces good
| results. Heck, the UK system is ancient, and the UK has a lot
| of innovation going on, both in tech and biotech.
| tagyro wrote:
| I'll give a different example: Romania (mostly) skipped
| (A/V)DSL and went directly to optical fiber, which resulted
| in having the top-spot in download speed for a couple of
| years.
|
| The US started from 100m ahead - the level Europe was at
| the time - so they already had a foundation - and (imo)
| made it easier to look ahead from atop a (100m) mound.
| kkfx wrote:
| I suggest another vision: how many talents, students with
| potential, teachers etc we ALL lost in WWI and WWII? You know
| back than in most countries serving in the army was mandatory.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| And it continues to this day with the Indian and Chinese
| immigrants to the US.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm also constantly reminded that there was a counterflow
| brain-drain, from the US to Europe, both before and after WWII,
| largely of African-Americans fleeing oppression not just in the
| US South, but throughout the country.
|
| James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay,
| James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Nina Simone. Others who didn't
| necessarily emigrate to Europe did spend much time there: Paul
| Robeson, John Coltrane, Lillian Smith, Alain Locke, and Ethel
| Waters amongst them.
|
| You can also see patterns in movement of creative and technical
| talent _within_ the US. There is of course the Great Migration
| from the South to northern, mostly industrial cities.
| California collected creative and technical talent from across
| the country, to a much greater extent than already established
| and notable Eastern states with large cities (New York,
| Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, ...). In some specific cases (the
| establishment of Hollywood), we know that lax patent
| enforcement and ready escape to Mexico was a strong draw for
| the early film industry against Edison 's lawyers. I suspect
| that in addition to the much-ballyhooed physical climate,
| reduced social strictures, ease of land development, and
| rapidly-growing metro regions particularly near Los Angeles and
| the San Francisco Bay Area, contributed. There's also of course
| the WWII and post-war / Cold War military economy which played
| a tremendous role.
|
| You also saw organisations such as RAND moving wholesale to the
| West in the 1950s, for a combination of factors: more space,
| closer to major aerospace operations. Entire families were
| shipped west by railroad.
|
| My hypothesis is that intellectual and creative talent seek
| freedom, in both positive (opportunity) and avoidance of
| negative (oppression, suppression, abuse) senses. As much as we
| talk of capital being more mobile than labour, _creative_
| labour being concentrated in a few individuals is _especially_
| mobile, and quite sensitive to conditions of oppression. One
| obvious risk shares some parallels with a paradox of
| transportation infrastructure: as transportation improves,
| formerly greenfield / undeveloped regions become developed
| _and land values explode_ such that _further_ improvements in
| transportation become exceedingly expensive, both financially
| and politically. In the intellectual and creative realms, moats
| and ramparts, institutional rigidities, commercial and
| political allegiances, etc., emerge, which actively retard
| further progress.
|
| The challenge is in identifying where new regions (in the
| physical and geographic sense) of opportunity might be
| emerging.
| highfrequency wrote:
| "The center of mathematics shifted quickly during the Nazi era
| and in the wake of World War II. Courant, Weyl and others helped
| move it to the U.K. and the U.S., where most of the top-ranked
| mathematics programs are located today."
|
| One of many instances in history where a city's rise to
| prominence was kicked off by political turmoil or religious
| persecution in the leading city of the previous era. For example:
| immigration of merchants and weavers from Belgium to the
| Netherlands following Spanish occupation and the Fall of Antwerp,
| Huguenot emigration from France during the French Wars of
| Religion, etc.
|
| When trying to answer the question of why a certain
| city/country/company started becoming successful, it's often a
| good starting point to ask _who_ moved there and what skills and
| experience did they bring, rather than mistaking it as a static
| group of individuals.
|
| Another corollary: it really pays to be a tolerant, stable and
| welcoming country. When other countries do stupid things you can
| benefit from an inflow of talent and experience.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Also it's probably important that the immigrants come after a
| turmoil, so their lives and research are reorganized, getting
| rid of political/hierarchical baggage and starting fresh with
| other top minds.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| Having graduated from a Polish university and having done a
| semester in Germany I can say that at least the people who
| attended university in Germany had an idea what are they
| interested in and what do they want to do after graduating, while
| me and all my peers in Poland just went to college because of
| societal pressure and kept jumping the hurdles put up by academic
| staff who knew no better and were taught that academia is just
| about about bootlicking your way up while pretending to teach.
| nikeee wrote:
| It's not just mathematics but physics as well.
|
| For example Paul Dirac, Max Born, Einstein, Enrico Fermi,
| Heisenberg, John von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Max Planck, and
| Wolfgang Pauli either studied, did research or had a profession
| in Gottingen
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| The Nazis destroyed Germanys progress
| api wrote:
| It's amazing how much America has benefited from brain drain from
| totalitarian countries. We should keep it up.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Sadly, this article does not answer the question of why such a
| concentration of brilliance developed at Gottingen. If we wanted
| to build a new Gottingen, how would we do it? What factors
| allowed Gottingen to exist? For most of a century, Germany was
| leading in most scientific and academic fields, but what allowed
| this? When we think of the Golden Age of physics we are thinking
| of a cultural event that had its center in Germany, but why? And
| why has Germany been so dull and flat ever since? Clearly,
| building a liberal democracy is not enough to ensure such a
| cultural event. Much of Germany was liberal but non-democratic
| during its golden age, as other places were, but what made
| Germany special at this time?
| chunkyguy wrote:
| this sounds like a good explanation:
|
| > University of Gottingen had more academic freedom than
| generations past. They were promised intellectual autonomy and
| freedom from close religious supervision. Instead, they were
| recruited solely to advance knowledge and carry out original
| research. The education of students was also more egalitarian
| than it had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor
| were admitted and trained.
| openrisk wrote:
| You are assuming a causal relation direct link between
| underlying factors and outcomes. It may well be that if
| Gottingen didn't exist some other place would have been the
| epicenter of a scientific revolution that was ripe to happen.
| One would then try to figure out what made _that_ place
| special.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| [delayed]
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It is actually also seeming to be asking the wrong question.
| Not why Gottingen, but why Germany. The universe may have been
| a natural attractor like big universities everywhere, but if
| the country surrounding it were impoverished mentally, it would
| not have much to attract.
| baumschubser wrote:
| One answer given at the time by Heinrich Heine was that
| Germany didn't have the revolution that put the new bourgeois
| class in power (like in France). Therefore censorship,
| political repression and the dead end of many ,,German" micro
| states meant that philosophy and other disciplines where a
| way to work on the topics of the new age without getting in
| conflict with the extraordinary dimension of political
| backwardness. You could say England is the proof that it does
| not have to be that way, but they where pioneering capitalist
| economy, so that's another case. Heinrich Heine hated
| Gottingen btw.
| Goettingenknowr wrote:
| There were plenty of accomplished mathematicians before
| Hilbert. But the real golden age of Gottingen math and physics
| was due to a large recruitment effort led by David Hilbert.
| After realizing some early success in his recruitment effort,
| the reputation of Gottingen as the place to be for math and
| physics grew more organically.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I'll venture a couple guesses.
|
| 1) Humboldt's university reforms creating graduate education
| and research universities. This doesn't explain the seed of
| German intellectual activity as it was a relatively late
| development, but it does explain the institutionalization of
| German intellectual activity. As to the seed...
|
| 2) German was the language with the most literate speakers in
| Europe during the Enlightenment. For a few centuries after the
| Reformation, Protestant regions did have higher rates of
| literacy than Catholic or Orthodox regions, and Germans were
| the most numerous of the Protestant cultural-linguistic groups.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Sources?
| Someone wrote:
| For the _"For a few centuries after the Reformation,
| Protestant regions did have higher rates of literacy than
| Catholic or Orthodox regions"_ claim, the map in https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Age_of_Enligh...
| supports that claim. It mentions ten countries. The four
| most literate were largely Protestant, the six least
| literate largely Catholic.
| playingalong wrote:
| The map in the link is strange. Shows 21st century
| countries while it pertains to times a few hundred years
| ago. This doesn't convey the trust.
| Merrill wrote:
| It's not clear whether it is desirable to build a new
| Gottingen. Communications and travel may have largely obviated
| the advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place,
| other than temporarily for conferences and visits.
|
| "Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture"
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-proof-settles-geom...
| is an interesting article that describes the multi-year effort
| to obtain this important result. The final proof has nine
| authors affiliated with seven institutions: Denis Gaitsgory,
| Max Planck Institute; Sam Raskin and Joakim Faergeman, Yale
| University; Dima Arinkin, University of Wisconsin; Nick
| Rozenblyum, University of Toronto; Dario Beraldo, University
| College London; Lin Chen, Tsinghua University; Justin Campbell
| and Kevin Lin, University of Chicago.
| ufo wrote:
| One interesting annecdote: combinatory logic uses single letter
| names for all its combinators (S, K, I, etc). Those names are all
| in german, despite being invented by a Russian jew (Moses
| Shoenfinkel) and further developed by an american (Haskell
| Curry). Both worked at Gottingen at the time.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's a bit amusing that the article stops with the 1930s exodus
| and entirely ignores the 1940s exodus to the USA organized by US
| intelligence agencies under Operation Paperclip. It's true not
| many of this latter group were involved in pure mathematics, I
| suppose:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
| croes wrote:
| I wonder how Nazi-Germany would have worked out without
| antisemitism.
| samatman wrote:
| It would have had a different name. Antisemitism was the
| central pillar of National Socialism.
| ponector wrote:
| There is a such example: USSR. Stalin is not so different to
| Hitler.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-27 23:01 UTC)