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The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden pp 295–299Cite as

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“America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee”382

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Abstract

In this chapter you will learn the reason why in 1948 Van der Waerden did not accept a well paid professorship at Johns Hopkins University and instead chose to return to Holland.

382 From America the Beautiful, a song by Katharine Lee Bates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Francis Dominic Murnaghan (1893–1976), mathematics chair at Johns Hopkins University (1928–1948).

  2. 2.

    Johns Hopkins University (JHU), The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Record Group 01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, May 5, 1947.

  3. 3.

    Ibid.

  4. 4.

    Ibid.

  5. 5.

    Ibid.

  6. 6.

    JHU, Record Group 01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, 2/9/1948.

  7. 7.

    http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Murnaghan.html

  8. 8.

    Aurel Friedrich Wintner (Budapest, 1903–Baltimore, 1958), one of the leading mathematics professors at Johns Hopkins University (1930–1958).

  9. 9.

    JHU, Record Group 01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, February 9, 1948.

  10. 10.

    Later I received from the author an inscribed copy of the book.

  11. 11.

    Van der Waerden, letter to Heisenberg, December 22, 1947, Private Papers of Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. I am grateful to Prof. Mark Walker for sharing with me the 1947–1948 correspondence between Van der Waerden and Heisenberg, and Van der Waerden and Goudsmit. I also thank Dr. Helmut Rechenberg, Heisenberg’s last Ph.D. student and former Director of the Werner Heisenberg Archive, for the permission to reproduce these materials.

References

  1. Bruijn, N. G. de, e-mail to A. Soifer, June 1, 2004.

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  2. Powers, T., Heisenberg’s War, 1st ed., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993 (a copy inscribed by the author to A. Soifer).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

    Alexander Soifer

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  1. Alexander Soifer
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© 2015 Alexander Soifer

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Soifer, A. (2015). “America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee”382 . In: The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_31

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