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Erschienen in:
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2013 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

6. Making a Career

verfasst von : Dirk van Dalen

Erschienen in: L.E.J. Brouwer – Topologist, Intuitionist, Philosopher

Verlag: Springer London

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Abstract

After his successes in topology, it was about time for Brouwer to find a position. There was no doubt that here was an exceptionally bright mathematician, but that was not quite enough for the board of the Amsterdam university. Korteweg started a campaign to get him a position as a lecturer or an extraordinary professor. As a first step he managed to get Brouwer accepted as a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy. From there it was not so difficult to get him a university position. In 1909 he was accepted as a private teacher, in 1912 as an extraordinary professor, 1913 full professor (Korteweg was so generous to exchange his chair with Brouwer’s extraordinary one). Recognition was now coming his way—the Mathematische Annalen invited him to join the board of editors (an honor indeed!). In 1913 Brouwer offered his assistance to Schoenflies in the preparation of a new edition of his Bericht; this brought him into fruitless discussions with Schoenflies, who could not master the intricacies of modern topology.

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Vorheriges Kapitel The New Topology
Nächstes Kapitel The War Years
Fußnoten
1
De Hengelaar, formerly De Boerendans. We gratefully acknowledge the generous help of Mr. and Mrs. J.A.L. van Lakwijk-Najoan, who provided valuable information on the pharmacy of Brouwer.
 
2
Brouwer to Scheltema, 23 August 1905.
 
3
The pun is lost in translation: ‘royaal’ stands for ‘generous’, ‘handsome’ and ‘royal’. Recall that Scheltema and Brouwer considered themselves kings of spiritual realms, cf. p. 34.
 
4
Oral communication Mrs. Peijpers.
 
5
Brouwer to Scheltema, 7 September 1906.
 
6
Brouwer to Scheltema, 8 July 1907.
 
7
Scheltema to Brouwer 6 August 1907.
 
8
Oral communication C. MacGillavry.
 
9
Altogether a distance of more than 130 km.
 
10
Brouwer to Scheltema, 2 June 1909.
 
11
Like his father, he studied geology. He ended his brilliant career as the Chairman of the Board of the Royal Shell.
 
12
Scheltema to Brouwer, 11 October 1908.
 
13
Scheltema to Brouwer, 4 September 1908.
 
14
Brouwer to Scheltema, 12 May 1909.
 
15
Brouwer to Korteweg, May 1908.
 
16
As a matter of fact, Poincaré fell ill during the conference, and someone else had to read his lecture. It is likely that Brouwer had nonetheless seen, or perhaps even met, Poincaré earlier during the conference.
 
17
Professor in Delft, the only other registered Dutch mathematician.
 
18
Looking at the list of the participants of the Congress, Castelnuovo (1909), one gets the impression that Brouwer could have met almost everybody that was going to be of interest for his later career. Emile Borel, Felix Bernstein, Blumenthal, Carathéodory, Cartan, De Donder, Dehn, Hahn, Hardy, Levi-Civita, Koebe, Hadamard, Hilbert, Poincaré, Zermelo. Even Jahnke was there. But even though the congress had not reached the size of the modern mega-meetings, it is hard to conclude from the list of participants who met whom.
 
19
Brouwer to Scheltema, 3 December 1909.
 
20
Brouwer to Scheltema, 11 June 1910.
 
21
Brouwer to Korteweg, 1908, undated.
 
22
Korteweg to Brouwer, 8 November 1908.
 
23
In 1909 Frederik Schuh was appointed. He was also a student of Korteweg, six years older than Brouwer.
 
24
Brouwer to Scheltema, 1 March 1909.
 
25
Another student of Korteweg. He had been a professor in Delft for one year before he was appointed in Amsterdam (10 October 1906).
 
26
Korteweg to Brouwer, 16 February 1909.
 
27
Brouwer to Korteweg, 8 June 1909.
 
28
Brouwer to Scheltema, 12 May 1909.
 
29
Cf. p. 32, Brouwer to Korteweg, 22 June 1909.
 
30
Kept in the University Library at Amsterdam.
 
31
Brouwer’s idea was not as eccentric as one might think: Lorentz filled the position of director from 1912–1920 after he had given up his full professorship at Leiden.
 
32
For the mathematical aspects of the Bericht episode, see Sect. 4.​6.
 
33
Brouwer (1909e, 1909f) the first paper of the series on continuous maps of surfaces into themselves and the first one of the series on vector distributions.
 
34
Brouwer to Korteweg, 22 May 1909.
 
35
Brouwer to Korteweg, 18 June 1909.
 
36
Schoenflies to Hilbert, 22 May 1909.
 
37
of 1900 and 1908.
 
38
Brouwer to Hilbert, 24 June 1909.
 
39
Schoenflies to Brouwer, 17 June 1909.
 
40
Concerning decomposition theorems, Schoenflies to Brouwer, 14 August 1909.
 
41
Brouwer to Hilbert, 24 June 1909.
 
42
Brouwer (1910e).
 
43
Over het Wezen van de Meetkunde, cf. p. 151.
 
44
Wiskunde, Waarheid en Werkelijkheid, 1919.
 
45
Brouwer (1909a), p. 23.
 
46
F. Kuiper.
 
47
Brouwer to Korteweg, 24 December 1909. The letter was accompanied by a copy of Brouwer’s letter to Hadamard.
 
48
See p. 203.
 
49
The Amsterdam University was a municipal university. The other ones were state universities.
 
50
Not the famous physicist.
 
51
Letter to the city council, 6 October 1910.
 
52
Brouwer to Scheltema, 11 June 1910.
 
53
David Hilbert, cf. p. 125.
 
54
Korteweg to Hilbert, 6 February 1911.
 
55
The letter of Poincaré has not been found.
 
56
Brouwer (1910a).
 
57
Brouwer to Korteweg, 10 September 1911.
 
58
A surprisingly modest position for a man who has just solved one of the famous problems of Cantor!
 
59
Oral communication E. Hölder.
 
60
In the October meeting of 1908 he gave a talk On plane curves and plane domains (see p. 139), and in the October meeting of 1910 he gave another talk, this time The invariance of the number of dimensions.
 
61
25 November 1911, published in Brouwer (1911e).
 
62
Borel to Korteweg, 2 January 1912.
 
63
The faculty was divided on Van Laar. Some found him useful, but others considered him to suffer from delusions of grandeur, for example, he insisted that an honorary doctorate was due to him. There was no support to keep him on. In fact, he was a man with a fine reputation in thermodynamics. He indeed got an honorary degree in Groningen in 1914. For more information see van Emmerik (1991).
 
64
Cf. Korteweg to the Mayor, 24 March 1912. The letter was accompanied by the recommendations of Hilbert, Klein, Poincaré and Borel.
 
65
Brouwer to Klein, 21 June 1912.
 
66
Published in 1912, reprinted in Brouwer (1919b) and translated in Brouwer (1913b).
 
67
The terms ‘formalist’, ‘intuitionist’ were already in 1893 introduced by Felix Klein in his ‘Evanstone lectures’, Klein (1893). Klein’s meaning does however not coincide with Brouwer’s.
 
68
Cf. van Dalen (1999b).
 
69
Here the urintuition is spelled out again.
 
70
Brouwer (1910h).
 
71
Brouwer (1913b), p. 92.
 
72
Brouwer (1914), p. 79.
 
73
The retiring age was 70.
 
74
Lize to Aldert and Lily, 4 May 1913.
 
75
i.e. a full professor.
 
76
Brouwer to Hilbert, 16 June 1913.
 
77
Lize to Aldert and Lily, 4 May 1913.
 
78
Brouwer to Korteweg, 31 December 1913.
 
79
Korteweg to Brouwer, 4 June 1914.
 
80
Brouwer’s research contacts were mainly with Göttingen; moreover, he was involved in refereeing for the Annalen even before he became a member of the editorial board.
 
81
At a meeting of the Math. Soc.
 
82
Korteweg to Brouwer 13 July 1914.
 
83
Brouwer was appointed editor of the Mathematische Annalen, cf. Brouwer to Klein 10 July 1914.
 
84
Brouwer to Hilbert, 16 April 1913.
 
85
Ibid.
 
86
Brouwer to Hilbert, 16 June 1913.
 
87
Schoenflies to Hilbert, 8 July 1913.
 
88
‘Wenn mein Mann durch Schoenflies nicht verrückt wird, verdankt er es Ihnen. Ihre Lize Br. Mrs. Brouwer to Hilbert, 11 September 1913.
 
89
Although the title page says ‘published jointly with Hans Hahn’, Schoenflies is the only author. Hahn acted as a critic and adviser (albeit not as prominently as Brouwer), he was to write a second volume on real functions which never appeared. In 1921 Hahn published his own monograph Theorie der reelle Funktionen I, Hahn (1921).
 
90
Carathéodory to Courant, 19 December 1928.
 
91
Brouwer to Schoenflies, 17 January 1921.
 
Literatur
Brouwer, L.E.J.: Het wezen der meetkunde. Clausen, Amsterdam (1909a). Inaugural address privaat docent, 12.10.1909. Also in Brouwer (1919b) MATH
Brouwer, L.E.J.: Continuous one-one transformations of surfaces in themselves. K. Ned. Akad. Wet. Proc. Sect. Sci. 11, 788–798 (1909e)
Brouwer, L.E.J.: On continuous vector distributions on surfaces. K. Ned. Akad. Wet. Proc. Sect. Sci. 11, 850–858 (1909f). Corr. in Brouwer (1910f)
Brouwer, L.E.J.: G. Mannoury, Methodologisches und Philosophisches zur Elementarmathematik. Nieuw Arch. Wiskd. 9, 199–201 (1910h)
Brouwer, L.E.J.: Beweis des Jordanschen Satzes für den n-dimensionalen Raum. Math. Ann. 71, 314–319 (1911e) MathSciNetCrossRef
Brouwer, L.E.J.: A. Schoenflies und H. Hahn. Die Entwickelung der Mengenlehre und ihrer Anwendungen, Leipzig und Berlin 1913. Jahresber. Dtsch. Math.-Ver. 23, 78–83 (1914)
Brouwer, L.E.J.: Wiskunde, Waarheid, Werkelijkheid. Noordhoff, Groningen (1919b) MATH
Castelnuovo, G. (ed.): Atti IV Congr. Intern. Mat. Roma. Accad. Naz. Lincei, Roma (1909)
Hahn, H.: Theorie der reellen Funktionen, I. Springer, Berlin (1921)
Klein, F.: Lectures on Mathematics. Delivered From Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893. Macmillan & Co., New York (1893). The so-called “Evanstone lectures”
van Dalen, D.: Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. In: James, I. (ed.) History of Topology, pp. 947–964. Elsevier, Amsterdam (1999b)
van Emmerik, E.P.: J.J. van Laar (1860–1938). A mathematical chemist. Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam (1991)
Metadaten
Titel
Making a Career
verfasst von
Dirk van Dalen
Copyright-Jahr
2013
Verlag
Springer London
Buch
L.E.J. Brouwer – Topologist, Intuitionist, Philosopher

Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4615-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4471-4616-2

Copyright-Jahr: 2013

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4616-2_6

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