[HN Gopher] Gottingen was one of the most productive centers of ...
___________________________________________________________________
Gottingen was one of the most productive centers of mathematics
(2019)
Author : marvinborner
Score : 257 points
Date : 2024-07-27 16:08 UTC (1 days 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.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > just as the GDP per capita of any individual European
| country pre WW1/2 is higher as well.
|
| Is that true? https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_
| auto:good,fl_pr...
| Galanwe wrote:
| Oh indeed, I looked at the GDP numbers and divided by the
| current population ratio, looks like it changed more than
| I thought across time.
| 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?
| mantas wrote:
| Looks like some people ain't aware how Soviets took
| German scientists as POVs and forced them to work for
| them. Americans did pretty much the same thing playing
| Nuremberg card.
| 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.
| racional wrote:
| Not quite true in regard to border closures. It certainly
| became much more difficult to move around or out of
| Occupied Europe, but significant numbers of people managed
| to do so (via for example Portugal, Turkey and Vichy
| Africa).
| kmoser wrote:
| It was both. Many fled after the war, seeking better
| opportunities outside Germany. So many, in fact, that the
| Berlin Wall was built.
| 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.
| achenet wrote:
| France also helped out a bit during the American
| Revolution
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
|
| (look at the combattants section)
| 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.
| globalnode wrote:
| why should they be? none of the so called winners are
| held accountable for their actions. best we can do is
| forget it all and move on, otherwise it will forever be a
| case of finger pointing.
| kibwen wrote:
| By "the Germans" I don't mean modern-day Germans, I mean
| the people of the era. And indeed, nobody should get a
| pass for the atrocities of war, the winners included. But
| no, we should not "forget it all", that's the worst
| possible thing you could do. The war happened, it was
| terrible, its consequences reverberate to this day, and
| we should all remember how it happened and why so that we
| can attempt to avoid having it happen again.
| mantas wrote:
| There's another important bit. Wilson policies played a
| big role in creating fractured Central Europe in
| interwar. I'm personally torn on this. On one hand, this
| gave my country a chance for independence. On the other
| hand, this made a bunch of puppets for Germany and Russia
| to play with. Maybe a unified buffer would have prevented
| WWII.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's fine to speculate what could have been, but
| historically the record for regional "nation building" of
| this sort has been mixed at best, given the examples of
| former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
| mantas wrote:
| Yep. But it was a mess either way. On the other hand, if
| there was some sort of Central Europe superpower
| building, Poland would probably have abused that. As it
| did anyway eventually occupying lands of 3 of its
| neighbors before being taken down by 4th...
|
| In any case, some sort of Intermarium probably was the
| only thing that could have prevented WWII in one shape or
| another.
| 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
| mantas wrote:
| Wilson policies were more about dealing with Europe after
| dissolution of Austrian, Russian and Ottoman empires.
| 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
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz
| fuzztester wrote:
| Oh, wow. I vaguely seem to remember that there was an
| aircraft carrier or other naval ship named after him.
| Read it somewhere long back, IIRC. Will google it, or it
| may be in your link.
|
| Edit:
|
| Found it in seconds, second para in your link.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz
| pfdietz wrote:
| There is much to read about him. I suggest Ian Toll's
| Pacific War trilogy.
| fuzztester wrote:
| thanks, will take a look.
| fuzztester wrote:
| wow, the downvoter trolls are rocking their stupidity
| again. just because I said I thought I had read _sometime
| earlier_ somewhere that a ship was named after Nimitz,
| before checking the Wikipedia article mentioned by the
| person who replied to me above, some creeps think that I
| was lying to score points, piddly hn points, that is.
| keep on creeping out, bros. show your calibre.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Interestingly, the name Nimitz doesn't sound that much
| Germanic, it could have been a Germanized version of an
| originally Slavic name like Nemec. (Which would mean
| "German"; quite a recursion :)
|
| The Nimitz family stems from Bremen, and quite deeply so
| (13th century), which would fit, because
| Bremen/Lueneburger Heide is not that far from territories
| settled by Polabian Slavs.
| 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.
| 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.
| talldayo wrote:
| > Remember when the US was pro-free speech and criticised
| dictatorships for blocking social media?
|
| Outside congresspeople pushing for re-election I feel
| like I haven't heard this at all. Not since the Snowden
| leaks has the US been so happy-go-lucky with their
| denouncement of surveillance.
| 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?
| madmask wrote:
| The planet will be fine and people will adapt
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah, dictators eventually fail because they make the wrong
| decision at such a large scale the system can't heal
| itself.
| 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.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Turns out being surrounded by two massive oceans and friendly
| and much weaker nations is a great advantage,
|
| An advantage that hasn't been put ti much use because once
| could make a strong point that things have been stagnant for 60
| years.
| 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.
| est31 wrote:
| Another example is Bavaria, which used to be a poorly developed
| place until the post-ww2 immigration of Germans from the east
| happened.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I wonder in today's times what country(ies) such scholars would
| move to if they were affected by extreme right wing persecution
| in their own countries, seeing that the wave is strong almost
| everywhere, especially in the country that was pretty much the
| _the destination_ for last migration i.e starting 1930s from
| Europe.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| Wasn't Israel invented to provide that? It's hard to think of
| a more effective immigration policy than "free entry for
| Jews".
| snowpid wrote:
| Germany? You meets lots of Turkish and Russian Academia here.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Chinese scholars are running away from left communist china
| into the US
|
| The "progressive" left of today is quickly running out those
| same asian (and other) scientists out of US and CAN
| universities, via social media mob lynching and DEI
| inquisitions.
|
| Im not seeing any right wing movement playing out with the
| same dynamics.
|
| Where are these institutions affected by right wing
| persecution?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Another corollary: it really pays to be a tolerant, stable
| and welcoming country.
|
| Yup. The US has a pretty incredible history of brain draining
| European countries when they become intolerant or living there
| became otherwise intolerable. So many inventors in the states
| were brilliant immigrants.
| 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
| kubrickslair wrote:
| Yes, this may be relevant:
|
| In 1934, David Hilbert, by then a grand old man of German
| mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister
| of education. Rust asked, "How is mathematics at Gottingen,
| now that it is free from the Jewish influence?" Hilbert
| replied, "There is no mathematics in Gottingen anymore."
| nwj wrote:
| It's really crazy how all these people overlap at Gottingen in
| the 1920s.
|
| Take Oppenheimer, for instance. He transfers to Gottingen from
| Cambridge in 1926 (after a relatively miserable time at the
| Cavendish labs studying under J.J. Thompson). He earns his PhD
| at Gottingen quickly. By September 1927, he's back in the USA
| on a teaching fellowship with Caltech.
|
| So, Oppenheimer isn't at Gottingen for very long - not even 2
| years! But in that brief time, he meet Max Born, James Franck,
| Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, John Von Neumann, Eugene Wigner
| who are also all there.
|
| Wolfgang Pauli and Enrico Fermi had moved to other institutions
| by 1926, and Edward Teller doesn't get there until 1930 - but
| it's plausible that the Gottingen connection (and their
| relationship to Max Born) are how Oppenheimer meets them.
| api wrote:
| It's amazing how much America has benefited from brain drain from
| totalitarian countries. We should keep it up.
| ausbah wrote:
| us benefits from brain drain from developing nations as well,
| which isn't as cool
| 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.
| nextos wrote:
| After working at several universities, and interacting with
| lots of institutions on both sides of the pond, I think this
| freedom issue is also what makes American Academia more
| successful than European Academia these days.
|
| In Europe, academic freedom is limited because the structure
| we have resembles a very wide pyramid, with some minor
| differences across fields and countries. Junior
| professorships are more rare and more difficult to get into.
| The result is always the same, a full professor that controls
| his field locally and lots of expendable badly-paid postdocs
| working for him. Access to funding is also much more limited,
| which in turn restricts the capacity of said postdocs to
| pursue their own ideas, even while working under the umbrella
| of the professor.
|
| In the US, tenure-track assistant professorships are much
| more common and requirements to apply are more flexible. Seed
| grants for junior faculty members are also common and not too
| hard to obtain. The result is a lot more freedom to explore.
| Basically, it is the same issue as with technology. EU
| suffers from over-regulation and control by some rent-seeking
| elites.
| jltsiren wrote:
| My experience is different. The main advantage of the
| American Academia is the availability of entry-level
| faculty positions. Success rates for funding applications
| are also higher. On the other hand, PhD students and
| postdocs are less independent from their supervisors than
| in Europe. They lack the usual protections as employees you
| would expect in Europe, and it's not as easy for them to
| get independent funding. Students and postdocs are also
| paid better than in the US (relative to what they would get
| outside the academia).
|
| I'm not sure about the status of academic freedom.
| Administrators, politicians, and donors seem to have more
| influence in the US, and the entire academia seems to be
| more politicized.
| nextos wrote:
| I agree, that's essentially what I said. Entry-level
| faculty positions and funding are much more common in the
| US.
| j7ake wrote:
| Differences (structure, funding, prestige) between
| institutes within Europe / USA are way larger than the
| differences between Europe versus USA.
|
| What really matters in the end is whether an institute is
| able to attract "rockstars" in their field. Even better if
| these rockstars care about their institute and are willing
| to hire and develop young talent.
|
| A single rockstar can elevate the prestige of an entire
| institution: look at Richard Sutton at University of
| Alberta, or Thomas Cech at Colorado.
| vintermann wrote:
| This was my impression also, that there is a lot of
| difference how academia works across Europe. I'm not
| really an academic, but I went to a small international
| machine learning conference some years ago. The Norwegian
| postdocs got paid better than the French professor,
| apparently.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The Norwegian postdocs got paid better than the French
| professor, apparently.
|
| Norway is a more expensive country to live in than
| France.
| j7ake wrote:
| A French professor (eg CNRS researcher) is a civil
| servant, appointed for life, with substantial benefits
| such as pensions and absolute academic freedom. A postdoc
| in Norway has salary contingent on grants, limited to a
| few years, and is at the mercy of an advisor (a bad boss
| will destroy your career).
|
| Making a few thousand euros more per month as a postdoc
| in Norway is nothing in comparison with a lifetime
| appointment at CNRS.
|
| Competition for CNRS positions is as difficult as getting
| into a top tier faculty position in United States.
| raverbashing wrote:
| While I'm not discounting your experience, American PhD
| students are burning out at a very high rate
|
| Funding is probably higher in the US and of course if they
| drop out getting a job I'd usually easier than in Europe.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Isn't it much simpler than that?
|
| US research receives 20 percent more funding relative to
| Europe (2017 data). More funding means more science? On top
| of that I would guess a post doc in the US can find a nice
| job at a company way way easier than the same person in
| Europe for the same reason: there are more higher-tech US
| companies with more big money who need the smartest people
| in the world to work for them.
|
| I would also guess more and more loss of buying power
| (inflation without increase in productivity) in general
| causes a carreer in academia to become less and less
| attractive relative to a carreer in the commercial sector.
| That goes for both Europe and the US I suppose.
|
| Example: I'm in Europe with a bachelors degree working as a
| freelancer (engineer) and probably make 300 to 500 percent
| more than people who work their ass off for decades in
| academia. So yeah there's "curiosity" and "passion" to stay
| in academia, but there's also cold hard cash.
| nextos wrote:
| My experience involves really well funded research areas
| in e.g. Oxbridge, sometimes better funded than their US
| counterparts I have interacted with. So I don't think its
| only about funding, but how funding is allocated. EU
| funding has a winner-takes-it-all structure. A few groups
| get enormous grants and the rest get nothing. Ironically,
| these groups have questionable productivity. Whereas in
| the US, e.g. NIH has lots of small and mid-sized grants
| that are suitable for a junior academic.
|
| Junior faculty openings also exhibit the same trend and
| are _much_ more common in the US. Among all people I have
| met in EU Academia throughout these years, _only_ one
| person managed to progress to a faculty position. All
| others left Academia. Quite brutal, that figure should
| give policymakers some pause. In contrast, I know a few
| US academics that moved from PhD student to assistant and
| associate professor positions.
|
| Exploiting postdocs without any promotion opportunities
| in sight is so common in EU that many countries are
| passing, or have already passed, laws to limit postdoc
| length. However, without more junior faculty openings and
| permanent staff scientist positions, I am not sure how
| this is going to work out.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > The education of students was also more egalitarian than it
| had been previously in Europe, as both rich and poor were
| admitted and trained.
|
| This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius is
| actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not of
| singular merit.
| 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:
| But if some other place had been the epicenter of a
| scientific revolution would Gottingen have prevented that?
| Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas
| discovering things independently? We could ask, why only
| Gottingen?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Wouldn't we have just seen people in two different areas
| discovering things
|
| We did. Gottingen was an important place, but not the
| epicenter of math. Mathematicians were working all over the
| globe from China to India, Russia to Britain, America and
| Germany. Just to mention one of the maybe most gifted
| people of that period in the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan,
| people are literally still going through his work and
| finding novel things.
|
| It's just that we're much better story tellers when it
| comes to some regions of the world. If you went by movies
| and biographies you'd think Alan Turing did half of all
| computer science, who remembers Konrad Zuse? That's one
| area where Germany routinely gets snubbed in the public
| imagination.
| 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.
| j7ake wrote:
| It shows you how valuable it is to have these superstars in
| your institute. Hiring One hilbert is worth more than hiring
| a thousand median scientists, and way cheaper too!
| throwawaydummy wrote:
| > This reminds me of a post I recall, that the lone genius
| is actually a symbol of society's sweeping failures and not
| of singular merit.
|
| (from a comment above) Idk much about math or anything
| would love to make it to AGI that can tell me which opinion
| is correct when reading HN
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| I read a bunch of Hilbert's letters once, thinking it would
| be an interesting window into a significant mind. It was 90%
| departmental politics - not really the cynical kind: he was
| really concerned with getting good mathematicians jobs (in
| Gottingen or elsewhere). And you get to watch him observe all
| his efforts come to naught as the German political situation
| goes nuts building up to the Second World War, and employment
| restrictions are added, people flee, etc. .
| Jipazgqmnm wrote:
| That is just partially true. Hilbert was essential but "just"
| one factor amongst others.
|
| For example, there was also Felix Klein (who brought Hilbert
| to Gottingen) who was more on the teaching side. He even
| designed the house from the ground up in a way that he
| thought would be optimal for teaching and working together.
|
| There is a really good article by Norbert Schappacher called
|
| "Das Mathematische Institut der Universitat Gottingen im
| Nationalsozialismus"
|
| or
|
| "The Mathematical Institute of the University of Gottingen
| under National Socialism"
|
| https://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_file.
| ..
|
| You can DeepL it. Here is just the first paragraph:
| Gottingen has been a name in the mathematical world since
| Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855). However, from the end of
| the 19th century until the National Socialists seized power,
| it was for many the center of the mathematical world, and in
| this respect it outstripped the traditional centers of
| interest: Paris and Berlin was above all the joint work of
| David Hilbert (1862-1943) and Felix Klein (1849-1925), around
| whom an increasingly important mathematical institute was
| formed. Hilbert's role was on the side of creative
| mathematical research, which he pursued with complete
| openness to all possible new ideas and with a versatility not
| seen since Gauss. Felix Klein, on the other hand, was above
| all an exceptionally successful organizer and academic
| teacher in Gottingen - four years before his appointment to
| Gottingen, a health breakdown had ended the period of his
| most original mathematical research.
|
| It goes into great detail from the pre-war to the post-war
| era.
|
| In addition, mathematics and physics were very much
| intertwined in those days - one inspired the other. And
| Gottingen was essentially a village - everyone knew everyone.
| They would meet up in a bar in the evening and speak about
| whats on their mind. That way, there was also a regular get-
| together with the local industry.
|
| For example Robert Wichard Pohl, head of the 1st physics
| institute (called "a patriarch of physics" or "The good
| Lord"), Gustav Tammann, head of the institute for physical
| chemistry, and the heads of Ruhstrat (a local company
| specialized in developing and manufacturing high-temperature
| industrial furnaces, transformers, etc.) regularly met. Pohl
| wanted to have a furnace for what was later called the
| Czochralski method (creating pure crystals) and Ruhstrat
| built the stuff.
|
| Or in 1894, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Prof.
| Walter Nernst, Ruhstrat created the adjustable sliding
| resistor, the basis for adjusting and changing resistances as
| well as current and voltage. They supplied the first private
| homes and businesses in Gottingen with electricity using
| electrical block stations and developed the electricity
| meter.
|
| Lots of aspects came together to thrive, not just Hilbert.
|
| P.S. Fun fact: Ernst (or Adolf?) Ruhstrat had the first car
| in town and later sold it to Tammann.
| 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.
| noch wrote:
| > Communications and travel may have largely obviated the
| advantages of assembling brilliant minds in one place, other
| than temporarily for conferences and visits.
|
| Lmao. Only someone who has never been a part of a high
| performance team with excellent mentors available in person
| throughout the day, can possibly believe this.
|
| Alternatively, try this sentence: "Communications and travel
| may have largely obviated the advantages of a married couple
| living together in one place to raise a family."
| neaanopri wrote:
| Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers, math
| can all be in LaTeX
| noch wrote:
| > Mathematicians aren't having sex or changing diapers,
| math can all be in LaTeX
|
| Sex and LaTex! I dig it!
| raverbashing wrote:
| Now this is the part I take issue with
|
| Most likely their discussion were over zoom while
| scribbling over a blackboard.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| I remember having an instant messanger 20years ago which
| would render LaTeX equations on the fly. The only one
| that can do it today is Emacs.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| The analogy is a bit hyperbolic but not off base at all.
|
| In my field, there is a lot of discussion over whether
| conferences should go virtual to ensure "equity",
| "inclusion", and all that; and to save pollution and CO2
| from plane travel. According to the defenders of that
| take, current technology makes meeting in person totally
| unnecessary and online conferences can replace physical
| ones just fine. But curiously enough, everyone who I've
| seen defend that position are at elite universities in
| places like California where they have a high
| concentration of top figures in the field within a short
| drive. Almost no one from more remote areas (like myself)
| defends that... largely because many of us have stories
| where those polluting plane tickets helped us connect
| with relevant people in the field, learn and boost our
| career.
|
| But back to the marriage analogy... when those people
| from top universities make that comment, I usually tell
| them that if they are so interested in equity, diversity,
| not polluting and all that jazz, and since according to
| them online interaction is enough and getting together
| physically is just a luxury, they should then take remote
| PhD students (which would even let them select from a
| larger pool!). It's an obvious conclusion of their
| position, right?
|
| The answer is always crickets.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| There's truth in both. For countries with little research
| funding (Eastern Europe in my case), travelling to top
| conferences is often prohibitively expensive. Top AI
| conferences are regularly in places like Hawaii. This
| excludes many regions and those researchers must submit
| to lower tier conferences, or - as already commonly
| happens - they have to move to a richer country and do
| research there.
|
| Remote conferences and lower publishing fees definitely
| help people at these underfunded places. But it is true
| that being there in person is still much more valuable.
| Informal face to face interaction at posters, joint
| dinners between different research groups, mingling
| during coffee breaks etc. are not replaceable by a Zoom
| Q&A.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I have to agree, high performance teams need to be together
| in proximity to do world changing stuff (or maybe in AR
| worlds that are as natural as real worlds in the future).
| Remote work is for big standard work that doesn't require
| too much innovation or if 1 person is capable of carrying
| the team. Yet to see counter examples to this
| rcarr wrote:
| If I remember right Deep Work by Cal Newport talks about Bell
| Labs and how that came to be such an epicentre of invention
| back in the day. The author reckons that the architecture of
| the building had a lot to do with it. It allowed the
| employees to do uninterrupted, concentrated work when needed
| but then when exiting their offices the design of the
| building facilitated lots of chance encounters with other
| people in other departments which meant a lot of exchanging
| of ideas and knowledge. You don't get this kind of "hive
| mind" effect with remote work.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think you're mixing the question of what creates great
| mathematics department and what makes a region generally
| interesting (plus the article actually answers all those
| questions well as other commenters note).
|
| Germany has many great mathematicians at present. Just by
| expanding population and budgets, it probably has more great
| mathematicians than in the Gottingen days. These mathematicians
| are not as famous as the Gottingeners of the 1920s, however,
| fundamentally because earlier mathematicians laid the
| foundation of the field and later researchers basically have
| built on those foundations and can't claim the same glory.
|
| As to post-war Germany being boring - I'd assume but it seem
| neither here nor there.
| chromanoid wrote:
| Gottingen is still a top 200 university, and as far as I
| remember a talk by Jens Frahm has the highest density of living
| Nobel Laureates. After the war a famous French singer made a
| song about Gottingen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9b6E4MnCWk
| And I think she sings of a left leaning free spirit that
| bloomed again after the war very soon. Academic lifestyle and a
| focus on the strife for knowledge are still substantial
| cultural and economic pillars of Gottingen.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| I was thinking the divide in teutonic culture is not north
| and south but diagonal. Too far east and too far south they
| get trigger happy, Schwabians just optimally arrogant,
| Hamburgers are too nice..
|
| Draw a line that passes thru Ulm & Goettingen, wide enough to
| contain also ___
|
| TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_sanction
| Jipazgqmnm wrote:
| Indeed. Hans-Gunther Klein, the then director of the Junges
| Theater Gottingen, had seen the famous French chansonniere
| Barbara at a concert in early 1964 and invited her to perform
| in Gottingen. Due to her life story and her own escape from
| the Nazis, she initially declined the invitation, but then
| reluctantly accepted it the following day. She demanded that
| a grand piano be provided for her performance. When she
| arrived at the theater on July 4, 1964, however, she found a
| baby grand piano on the stage. Barbara was extremely annoyed
| and categorically refused to give the concert. It seemed
| impossible to fulfill her request, although Hans-Gunther
| Klein tried everything. In the end, however, a grand piano
| was procured, which an old lady had made available and which
| ten students carried through the city. Despite the artist's
| initial displeasure and the two-hour delay before the concert
| began, Barbara was enthusiastically celebrated by the
| audience, which greatly impressed her.
|
| Due to the great success of her first appearance and the
| unexpectedly warm atmosphere in the city, she extended her
| engagement by a week. On the afternoon before her last
| concert, she summarized the impressions she had gathered over
| the past few days, which had been unexpectedly positive, in
| the rough version of the chanson Gottingen, which she wrote
| in the garden of the Junges Theater, and performed it (not
| yet fully formulated and with a different melody) that same
| evening. The success of the chanson was sudden and
| overwhelming. She then returned to Paris, where she completed
| the lyrics and composition.
|
| The Junges Theater at that time was housed in the house of
| the current Lumiere cinema.
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > despite being invented by a Russian jew (Moses Shoenfinkel)
|
| Interestingly, that name doesn't look particularly Russian.
|
| German Jews often possess incredibly Slavic names like
| "Moskowitz", suggesting an unclear boundary between being
| "German" vs "Russian".
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It's most likely because Russian and Steppe jews arrived from
| the Rhine area after the black plague.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So, "German Jews" come from Russia, but "Russian Jews" come
| from Germany?
|
| Moskowitz in particular is the German spelling of a Russian
| patronymic identifying the man's father as having a Yiddish
| name. That's several cycles of transferring between Russia
| and Germany.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Yes, in fact! Ashkenazi Jews were diaspora'd to the Rhine
| by the Romans and to Poland by middle age German polities
| for "causing the black plague". The Russians conquered
| the areas of the Steppe they settled. There was an exodus
| of Russian Jews to the west during the pogroms of the
| early 1900s, with many (including my great grandparents)
| settling in Austria and Germany.
| 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
| kmoser wrote:
| Operation Paperclip doesn't seem to have been specific to
| Gottingen so it's only tangentially related to the topic.
| 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.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| No, not really. It was a dumb ideology, but not as dumb as
| "points 1-10: Jews bad". Like almost any ideology that went
| anywhere, it had positive things that it valued, and these
| were more foundational than things (people...) that it wanted
| to remove or destroy.
| Tainnor wrote:
| The core of Nazism was that it viewed humanity as a
| struggle to the death between different peoples (such as
| Germanic people and Slavs), and that elements such as Jews,
| disabled people, homosexuals, communists, were like a
| parasite slowly killing the German people if not destroyed.
|
| It's really one of the most destructive and self-defeating
| ideologies ever, much more so than e.g. fascism in Italy
| and Spain.
| samatman wrote:
| Yes, really.
|
| I can't recommend reading _Mein Kampf_ , because it sucks,
| but it's essential to have an informed opinion on this
| subject.
| ponector wrote:
| There is a such example: USSR. Stalin is not so different to
| Hitler.
| racional wrote:
| He was similarly evil of course. But he was a totally
| different creature (and came to and held power in ways very
| different) from that other guy.
|
| That said, one can certainly imagine a NS movement that left
| the Jews alone and concentrated its wrath the other usual
| suspects. It might not have achieved quite the fiery
| intensity, or had quite the degree of hypnotic effect that it
| had on so many people that it did without the singular choice
| of a primary "hate object" that it made
|
| Resonating as it did with centuries of psychic undercurrents
| in regard to the position of the Jewish minority in European
| society.
| cardanome wrote:
| Complete opposite economic policies. State ownership and
| collectivization under Stalin, privatization and killing
| unions under Hitler.
|
| The "socialism" in the name was just branding. The Hitler-
| wing of the Nazi party was extremely right wing, especially
| in economic matters, and financed by the German industry.
| Anyone in the party holding sympathy with strasserism and the
| like was quickly purged or murdered.
|
| Asking how fascism without antisemitism would have have fared
| makes no sense, as having internal and external enemies is a
| crucial part of fascism. Pinochet in Chile might be an
| example where fascism wasn't particular antisemitic but I
| assure you it was still not great for intellectual
| development, on the contrary.
| lispm wrote:
| > privatization and killing unions under Hitler.
|
| That was not defining for the economic policies under
| Hitler. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
|
| The Nazi economic policy had one goal in the early years:
| forcing the German economy to concentrate on wartime
| preparations. Building up the military power and the
| military economy. All the companies were forced to work
| towards that goal. Many Germans were put into forced labor
| ("Reichsarbeitsdienst", ...) to support the build-up of the
| military and the military economy.
|
| Large amounts of weapons had to be developed and produced:
| for Heer, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
|
| The goal was to be ready for a large-scale war in the East
| in just 4 years.
|
| With the war started, the economy was mostly a state-
| directed war economy, private or not. Even though there
| were large private companies they were all directed to work
| for the war economy.
|
| The Nazis themselves were also involved in large scale
| industrial production. The Concentration Camps were also
| producing for the military. "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" (->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_through_labour
| )
|
| That the Nazis were supported by leaders of the German
| industry did not mean that the Nazis were interested in
| privatizing, market economies or such. There was one goal:
| reorganizing the German economy to build-up and run the
| large scale war in the East. The goal was to colonize and
| enslave East Europe. Finances were concentrated on the war
| economy and other economic activities were no longer
| important or even possible. Companies involved would profit
| from it financially and expand. Companies involved in
| private sector activities would have a hard time. For
| example finances and raw materials was with priority
| allocated to the military economy.
| cenamus wrote:
| And what after the war? They sure had plans and policies
| about the economy after it was all transformed to solely
| support the war effort?
| lispm wrote:
| They didn't get very far with anything more realistic. A
| lot of the plans and policies were caused by the
| development of the war. Hitler himself was not an
| economist. His background was art and military. His hobby
| was city architecture and military strategy...
|
| A large scale area in Eastern Europe was dreamed about
| (-> upto 1933) and in 1939 the war started with the
| attack on Poland to realize this war for Lebensraum,
| where the Germans then would be the elite race and the
| others were slaves (or dead). This east european region
| would provide food, energy, raw materials, ... There were
| ideas about what this large "Reich" would be like. But
| that was not close to be realized, given that Germany was
| deeper in war with every day, on two sides, 1941 onwards:
| in the east in the Soviet Union and against a US lead war
| in the west. Germany was busy fighting the war.
|
| 43/44 some German economist were beginning design an
| economy in more detail for a time after a war. But it
| then became clear that it was after a lost war (with the
| Nazis no longer in power) and that this time probably was
| not far away, with then the war being lost in 1945.
| lispm wrote:
| > I wonder how Nazi-Germany would have worked out without
| antisemitism.
|
| That was often heard in Germany after the war. Hitler's
| politics were not seen as bad, if only the jews were not
| killed. Often, it was mentioned that Hitler's achievement was
| to reduce the mass unemployment after getting to power in 1933.
|
| "Nazism" is defined by more than "antisemitism" ->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
|
| * the main goal of the Nazis was to conquer and enslave East
| Europe.
|
| * for that the Nazis transformed Germany into a war machine
|
| * the war to enlarge Germany was the defining goal and
| everything was forced to support that goal
|
| * generally Nazi ideology was racist and brutal. There were
| lots of groups which were to be killed and/or enslaved.
|
| * it was a Dictatorship with Hitler as a "Fuhrer"
|
| Even if Nazi Germany were not "antisemitic" it would still have
| started the war in the East to conquer East Europe as a colony
| (-> "Lebensraum" -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum ).
| cenamus wrote:
| The "hunger plan" is also devastating to read about, just a
| whole different scale of murder and enslavement
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
| amai wrote:
| Having a scapegoat was crucial for the Nazis. Without the jews,
| who should have taken that role?
|
| And without refugees and woke feminists who would the modern
| rightwings blame for all the misery in society?
| Qem wrote:
| > Having a scapegoat was crucial for the Nazis. Without the
| jews, who should have taken that role?
|
| If they had arised a few decades later they probably would
| scapegoat immigrants.
| pkoird wrote:
| I suppose a similar argument could be made about Bell Labs, where
| much of the digital foundations were invented.
| graycat wrote:
| As I recall, Bell Labs had a license to print money -- they had
| a government permitted monopoly on the US voice telephone
| network.
|
| So, for one effort, they saw that for the electronic signal
| amplifiers they needed, vacuum tubes, amazing and powerful,
| were too big, hot, expensive, and delicate so invented
| transistors, patented them, and, realizing the power, gave the
| patent to the world. Today if we had to pay a penny a
| transistor, then the 8 core AMD 4.0 GHz processor I bought for
| $115 (with HOW many transistors?) would cost -- hmm, could buy
| a house, a big one!
|
| So, net, Bell Labs was a big success for Bell, its
| stockholders, the US voice telephone network, the future of
| technology, the economy, and the standard of living of the
| world.
|
| How to do that again? Hmm ....
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Apple rolls in money in a way very similar to Bell, even
| though it doesn't have a legal monopoly.
| ekun wrote:
| I worked with an older German man who was a consultant on a
| research project that I was working on in graduate school. He was
| born in Gottingen and told stories how as a kid he got to test
| his paper airplanes in their wind tunnels with these famous
| scientists.
| amai wrote:
| Gottingen became a center of math clearly because of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss, the Princeps
| mathematicorum. His influence was crucial for the development of
| math and science in Germany of the 19th century.
| whotheheckknows wrote:
| 'Want more, get more' (related Comic it's in german... but ...who
| may know for what's good... I'm a non native english speaker...)
|
| https://shorturl.at/guck2
|
| regards...
| bikenaga wrote:
| Constance Reid's wonderful biography "Hilbert" [New York:
| Springer-Verlay, 1983; ISBN: 0-387-04999-1] describes a lot of
| the history of mathematics in Gottingen. It may be the finest
| mathematical biography I've ever read.
|
| Hermann Weyl wrote an article on Hilbert's mathematical work
| (from the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society [pdf]):
|
| https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1944-50-09/S0002-9904-1944...
|
| Hilbert's mathematical range was enormous. Among many things, he
| was known for his 23 "Hilbert problems" which influenced a lot of
| subsequent mathematics:
|
| Benjamin Yandell, "The Honors Class - Hilbert's Problems and
| Their Solvers". Natick, MA: A. K. Peters, 2002.
| [ISBN:1-56881-141-1]
|
| There's been significant progress on some of the problems since
| Yandell's book, but it's still a good introduction.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Bernhard Riemann, the head of mathematics at Gottingen from
| 1859 to 1866, invented Riemannian geometry, which paved the way
| for Einstein's future work on relativity. Felix Klein, the chair
| of mathematics from 1886 to 1913, was the first to describe the
| Klein bottle,..._
|
| ...paving the way for Cliff Stoll!
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