An American goes to Europe: three letters from Oswald Veblen to George Birkhoff in 1913/1914 (Q660176)

The American mathematician Oswald Veblen (1880-1960) spent the academic year 1913-1914 in Europe. While he was overseas Veblen, an inveterate and accomplished correspondent, wrote to his fellow mathematician and friend, George Birkhoff (1884-1944), describing the people he had met and the places he had visited. Veblen had known Birkhoff since the early 1900s when they had both been students in Chicago. Veblen started his trip with a visit to the `Third Scandinavian Congress of Mathematicians, held in Kristiania (Oslo) from 3 to 7 September 1913' from which he reports with interesting remarks for instance on Mittag-Leffler. Veblen was irked by the lack of interest in, or awareness of, important American mathematical work shown by some of the mathematicians he encountered while abroad. The Germans in particular he found to be especially insular. In letter to Birkhoff from December 1913 Veblen writes among other things: `I am beginning to have definite impressions of Germany. Mathematically, even more than politically, it is a monarchy. The mathematical situation is well illustrated by a remark of Landau's when I asked him whether there was any interest in Abelian functions and the like (more than one variable): No-one in Germany is interested in anything Hilbert has not worked with. They are only mildly interested in what is going on elsewhere, unless it touches pretty directly on their own work.' About Berlin, Veblen has to say: `I have not seen as much of the mathematicians in Berlin as those in Göttingen. But two points have struck me: the pressure is not nearly as high; and there is not nearly as great a proportion of Jews.' However, Veblen cannot hide his appreciation for Hilbert and by and large he seems to have found the atmosphere in Göttingen at least more stimulating than in Paris from where he writes another letter in May 1914. The Veblens had to speed up their return to the U.S. on August 8, four days after World War I had broken out. The three letters, which are kept within the Birkhoff-Papers at the Harvard University Archives, are an excellent source for a study of the early European-American relationship in mathematics.