[ExI] two years in the slammer for blammisphy?

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 12 May 2010, spike wrote:

> >...On Behalf Of Tomasz Rola
> > ...
> > > jingle or a rhyme, in a Polish-ized dialect of Yiddish, which roughly 
> > > translates "The gentiles are said to have discovered a theorem.  Indeed,
> the gentiles?  Is this true?"
> > > 
> > 
> > This sounds nicely, but a quick look at names gives another 
> > truth more compelling. Something along the lines "gentiles 
> > did all right, too" - at least in Poland...
> > Regards,
> > Tomasz Rola
> 
> Hi Tomasz, 
> 
> The reason I mentioned the Jewish angle on this topic is something that *I
> think* was in Ulam's autobiography Adventures of a Mathematician, or it
> might have been in Marc Kac's Autobio Enigmas of Chance, or even another
> good book I read at about that time, Mathematics and Logic.

Ah, you have meant this. Hopefully, this time I've got you right, we will 
see. I really want to grab Ulam's book one day and read it. Alas, my 
interests not always give me enough time for everything. About two other 
books, I am not sure if I have heard. But titles are luring...

Overally, I consider people of Jewish ancestry to be quite bright. It 
struck me very early, how many of Jewish-looking names I have been meeting 
with during my books explorations. Names, like Teller, von Neumann, Erdos 
or Ulam. There are many more of them, but those have just fallen out of my 
head. They were truly great minds! Ok, actually I wasn't aware of their 
Jewish roots at first, but much later I started to learn more about them, 
their scientific careers etc.

> In any case, whoever said it commented that the Jewish mathematicians from
> Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Hungary and other Eastern European nations
> wrote letters and worked together because they spoke Yiddish.  That is the
> critical point: they had it going on because of a shared language that
> transcended national borders and cultures.  I definitely get this whenever I
> discuss my own favorite math topics with people from various parts of the
> globe.  

The idea looks very probable to me. Even though I never before have seen 
it from this particular angle. Well, it is probable, because before 1918, 
there were only three countries on those territories. And going through 
the borders was not a big problem (usually there is no problem with this, 
anyway, but getting passport is a different story). So, since Yiddish 
comes from Germanic languages and German was official language both in 
later Germany and Austria-Hungary, I guess it became a natural choice for 
Jews living there and next, by contacts, for those in Poland (and later, 
Russian Empire).

But I am a bit doubting about how much real work had been done by means of 
snail mails. My wild guestimate is, it would take about two days for a 
letter to go from Lvov (now Lviv) to Budapest (or Vienna). And this is 
still inside formerly one country (railways!). And it's an optimistic 
minimum.

Consider, for example, a work style of Paul Erdos. He used to knock a door 
of fellow mathematician, be his guest for some time (maybe a week, maybe a 
month, not sure), coauthor an article or two and move on, to another guy. 
So, even if he would have been able to make many mail exchanges with lots 
of people, he preferred a good old face to face contact instead. So it was 
in former times, I think. Mail was for general things.

So, work by mail, it was rather difficult and time consuming. Sure, on the 
other hand, long intervals promoted deeper thinking. Not like twitter and 
communicators, hehe. Besides, what the author meant might have been that 
they used to send to each other things like drafts of their books or 
articles. In this case, I think it was still quite a lot of work since 
they were not meant to be published in Yiddish, I think.

As of chatting in Yiddish with one's local coworkers, this was doable, 
provided one condition was met (more on this later). First of all, I 
believe majority of people living in middle Europe those days were at 
least bilingual. They had home language and they had official language of 
their country. I mean, before 1918. In Germany, this was different because 
they pushed hard their language on everybody they could (and they could do 
so, because minorities there were rather minor, compared to other 
countries I talk about). But in Russia or Austria-Hungary, it wasn't 
anything unusual to speak with people of very different languages in a 
span of one or two hours. Like, one wakes up, one says hello to mother 
(say, in Chech), one goes to buy a bread in a German-owned bakery, further 
on one goes to school with little Hungarian boy from the next door. Well, 
ok, I am making it a bit too colorfull, but reality wasn't homogenic, 
either.

Actually, people were not quite bilingual. They were "floating 
multilingual". They could talk to and be understood by other people living 
nearby - and this could mean three or four languages, too. This is how 
I've heard it from tales about good old days (the older they were, the 
better they were ;-) ) when people used to have, say, Ukrainians, 
Russians, Poles and Jews for their neighbours. Sometimes Romanians, or 
Germans or Hungarians for the fifth place. Might make a good place for a 
linguist...

Also, a so called educated man, was supposed to know at least basics of 
Latin. And some of them learned classical Greek, too. And if they went to 
study abroad, they learned whatever they had to, be it French or Russian 
or Dutch.

So, a Yiddish speaking student had in fact a lot of opportunities to learn 
other languages, too. However, since Yiddish in latin transliteration is 
surprisingly similar to German (not so much surprise, it's the same 
family) and I guess the same goes with its spoken form, so I suspect that 
people used German and Yiddish in reality. German was, for a lot of 
scientists of that time, a language of choice. This hypothesis has one 
advantage over "just Yiddish" one. It is, there was no, AFAIK, academic 
centre which used mainly Yiddish. And Yiddish speaking scientists were 
dispersed. So, even if there was enough of them locally to form such a 
group, there was a danger of them alienating themselves from their 
colleagues. Not good, since science is perhaps more about sharing the 
results than about having them.

But, as usually, I can be wrong. What I have written above is based on how 
I see this particular period of some geographic region. It is still 
possible that I might have misunderstood something. Or even all of it.

However, if I am right, then I really wonder why German has not been 
mentioned :-).

> The Yiddish language itself was not the magic ingredient that created the
> environment for advancement in math, but rather the existence of a common
> language that allowed the Jewish mathematicians who spoke it to join in a
> symbiotic relationship with each other, or create a synergy that caused
> results to explode forth like the flowers of spring.  Mathematics really
> does this when a bunch of guys are talking and thinking together.

Right, there are no magic languages. But one more possible use for Yiddish 
could be this. In the past, materials to be read (as required part of 
curriculum) could be in a few very different languages. Hundred years ago, 
these could have been German, French and English, for example. This was 
the case with mathematics. So, if one just started and had to quickly 
grasp what there was, it was much easier to form a group sharing common 
tongue, with people knowing other languages, who could read in foreign 
language and teach their mates in their own one. The shared language 
itself seems to be unimportant - other than all of them understood it.

Also, having idea explained in one's own language helps a lot when trying 
it in a foreign one. I have just tested it a few hours ago, as I peeked 
into a website hosting Polish mathematical monographies printed 50 years 
ago. The joke is, they were written in many languages, not only in Polish. 
There is, for example, "Topologie" in French by Kazimierz Kuratowski. As I 
have in the past had contact both with French and with topology (both were 
short, but interesting, but right now mostly forgotten) I had a look 
inside. Well, even though I have never learnt French mathematical 
language, I was able to understand that "ensembles" are "zbiory" (sets), 
"produit cartĂŠsie" is "produkt kartezjanski" (Cartesian product) and so 
on, and so on. Obviously, some words are similar. At least I was able to 
understand titles.

This approach didn't work with "Gitterpunkte in mehrdimensionalen Kugeln", 
by Arnold Walfisz. I can only barely comprehend this has something to do 
with spheres. The moral is, don't read books in German before you learn 
German. But, if I knew Yiddish, the book would probably be mine :-).

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **