The Emergency Committee: Fueling a Mathematical Emigration
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany, marking the culmination of the Nazi Party's rise to power. Violence and terror ensued, as Hitler launched a devastating genocide against the Jews and other non-Aryans, and initiated a ruthless rampage through Europe. Hitler's reign brought immense pain, suffering, and destruction to millions throughout Europe and across the world; however, amidst the dark injustices perpetrated by Hitler and the Nazis, he made a dramatic, ground shifting impact on the global mathematics community.
This project aims to explore Hitler and the Nazis effect on mathematics; specifically, that brutal anti-Semitism facilitated a migration of the mathematics community from Germany to the United States. To establish this causal link, I will analyze the forces that pushed Jewish mathematicians out of Nazi Germany, the mechanisms by which Jewish mathematicians immigrated to the United States, and the subsequent impact of this migration on the American mathematics community. Specifically, first, I will show how anti-Semitic legislation and social bigotry forced Jewish mathematicians out of Nazi Germany. Then, I will explore how American mathematicians (and other scientists) formed alliances and raised funding to aid displaced foreign scholars and find them a home at American Universities. Lastly, I will investigate how this migration resulted in the passing of the mathematical torch from Germany to the United States, from the establishment of renowned institutions to the positive impact of high quality migrant scholars on PhD student success.
Anti-Semitism in Germany
Hitler's rampage through Germany did not stop at academic institutions; his rise to power culminated in the expulsion of over 145 Jewish mathematicians. [6] Many of these expelled mathematicians came from Göttingen University: the premier mathematics institution in Germany, and perhaps in the entire world.
Ludwig Bierberbach, a former Felix Klein graduate student from Göttingen, helped lead the attack on intellectual Jews as a mouthpiece for the Nazi party. Bieberbach decried the Jewish influence in mathematics. He proudly echoed the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews thought in the abstract, while Aryans focused on real world applications. [1] He exclaimed, for example, that "While the thought process of Gauss is always deep and clear and inclined to the intuitional and its application, that of Jacobi, on the other hand, is ever wilfully abstract, full of intellectual arrogance and of a diabolical cleverness; in general, a juggling with concepts and an unmistakable craftiness are distinguishing marks of Jewish mathematics." [8]
On April 7, 1933, Hitler introduced the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, excluding Jews, among others, from employment, including involvement in organizations and professorships. Later that month, the Nazi's introduced legislation to drastically limit the number of Jews permitted as students at Universities.
Hitler's rise brought tremendous anti-Semitism to Göttingen (as it did seemingly everywhere in Germany). By April, 1933, the majority of the student body identified with the Nazi party; most Jewish professors either were fired, or quit, and those who remained faced immense backlash and boycotts. [13]
For example, Jewish Göttingen professor Edmund Landau attempted, in September, 1933, to push through the anti-Semitism and continue to hold lectures; Göttingen students boycotted his courses, and subsequently forced his resignation. [13]
Aiding Displaced Scholars
Meanwhile, as Hitler launched into his master plan, the Great Depression ravaged the United States of America. Many Americans lost their jobs and faced extreme poverty.
Yet the conditions in the United States far exceeded those for non-Aryans living under Hitler's Reich. Thus, an abundance of Jews, including many Jewish scholars, and other non-Aryans desperately tried to cross the Atlantic and seek refuge within the border of the United States. Unfortunately, strict immigration quotas imposed severe difficulties on moving to the United States. However, luckily for mathematicians (and other scholars) a special amendment exempted professors appointed to American Universities from the quotas. This special amendment came in the form of section (4)d of the Immigration Act of 1924, signed by President Calvin Coolidge. [9]
While this exemption certainly helped, it did not ease the difficulty for displaced Jewish scholars in actually finding a university position in the first place. The Great Depression stifled the growth of American academia. Mathematicians enjoyed few research opportunities and received little pay. [2] Few scholarly research positions were available, and to make matters worse, anti-Semitism in American academia added yet another hurdle for Jewish mathematicians fleeing Europe. For example, American academics often concluded that the number of Jews in a given institution must be limited, and preferably limited to one. [9]
Despite these tremendous barriers to success, many Jewish scholars found employment when they fled to the United States. They owe this success, in large part, to Oswald Veblen, R.G.D Richardson, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
In May of 1933, Veblen approached the Rockefeller Foundation with concerns regarding Nazi attacks against German academia. That very same month, Veblen and the Foundation, reacting to the horrors of Nazi Germany, worked together to found the Emergency Committee to Place Foreign Scholars. [2] Veblen served as the mathematical mind of the Committee, while the Rockefeller Foundation provided the funding. [2] Veblen, along with his Committee colleague Hermann Weyl, worked to place European refugee scholars in academic positions, specifically research oriented positions, on American soil. [2] These research positions were usually temporary, but would ideally become permanent down the line. [4] Veblen scrupulously gathered information on each and every applicant; he assessed their “scholarship, personality, adaptability and teaching ability”, and he reached out to European colleagues if this information was not readily available in the States. [9] Through this work, the Emergency Committee facilitated a tremendous movement of mathematics scholars from Göttingen to the East Coast of the United States.
Interestingly, mathematicians formed some of the earliest targets for rescue by the Emergency Committee, as they were quickly recognized not just for their importance to science as a whole, but also for their influence in organizations and for many of their active stances against the Nazi party. In fact, mathematics received more aid from the Committee than any other field of Science. [9]
In late May of 1933, just weeks after the founding of the Committee, R.G.D Richardson, the chairman of the Brown University mathematics department, took notice of the Committee’s work. Richardson proposed to cooperate with the Committee and accept displaced scholars fleeing Nazi Germany at Brown University. [2] Other universities soon followed suit. The President of Illinois established a group to work with the Emergency Committee and New York University accepted Richard Courant, a Committee appointee, to lead their graduate mathematics program. On a personal level, Richardson felt a strong animus towards the Nazi party; for example, he wrote to the President of the American Jewish Congress that “our organization views with dismay and almost incredulity the developments in Germany”. [2]
Nearly all German mathematicians aided by the committee held posts at Göttingen. This is not particularly surprising, as Göttingen was the focal point of mathematics in early twentieth century Germany. However, that the Committee relocated so many Göttingen scholars in America, and at such prominent institutions, is certainly reflective of a foreign impact on the American mathematical community. This impact came not just from the sheer number of mathematicians from Göttingen, but also from the culture they brought with them. The mathematical philosophy of Göttingen that once attracted so many young Americans to Germany physically migrated to American soil. [11]
While the Committee's work for German mathematicians predominantly encompassed Göttingen scholars, they also relocated German mathematicians from the University of Frankfurt and the University Breslau, to the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. [11]
The Impact
In his piece “Quality Matters: The Expulsion of Professors and the Consequences for PhD Student Outcomes in Nazi Germany”, Fabian Waldinger attempts to show a link between faculty quality and success of PhD students. To do this, Waldinger gathered data on faculty productivity based on publications in top academic journals. He then averaged the quality rating of each faculty member at an institution to determine the overall quality of the institution. Then, he compared this data to success markers of PhD students, such as published dissertations in top academic journals and assumption of a full time professorship. His results show that “faculty quality is found to have a very sizable effect on the career of former PhD students”; more specifically, his results “suggest that PhD student outcomes in affected departments deteriorate after the dismissal of high-quality professors”. [15] Prior to 1933, Germany sat at the forefront of global mathematics. German institutions enjoyed high education quality and produced impressive doctorate students. However, after the 1933 expulsions of German scholars by the Nazi party, German institutions, which led the world in mathematics, experienced a sharp decline in faculty quality, and in turn, a sharp decline in PhD student success. [15] Students graduating from departments with high quality dismissals saw a “much lower probability of publishing their dissertation in a top journal” after 1933, and saw a “relatively sharp drop” in their likelihood of acquiring a full time professorship. [15]
The United States functioned as a premier destination for displaced German mathematicians. Many of these mathematicians came from top German institutions: Göttingen lost 60% of its mathematics faculty, while Berlin lost 40% of its mathematics faculty. [15] This signals that not just any mathematicians left Germany, but that many of the best mathematicians left Germany; and as the faculty quality at Göttingen, Berlin, and other German institutions declined, measurable success of PhD students declined correspondingly.
Richard Courant
The career of Richard Courant offers excellent anecdotal evidence supporting this conclusion. Courant, a premier faculty member at Göttingen, found his way to the United States and settled in at New York University. [1] As the loss of high-quality faculty continued to damage German institutions, New York University, under the leadership of Courant, began to produce impressive PhD students.
While Courant’s mathematical abilities played a role, his talents as an educator and as an administrator deserve immense credit in NYU’s success. Courant, from his time at Gottingen, understood that a coherent mathematical community is essential for a program’s success:
“Courant was very articulate about the needs of a community of mathematicians for good work, as evidenced by his time not only in Göttingen, but also in his institutional building efforts in New York. Such efforts were not strictly dedicated to the intellectual development of mathematics per se, but also included classical music events and gatherings in the Courant family garden at their home in New Rochelle, about 20 miles outside of the city.” [14]
Courant learned from his time in Germany that a tight-knit mathematical community is crucial to the flourishing of a mathematics department. Courant’s excellence as an educator, as a faculty member, and as an administrator, which he developed during his time in Germany, proved essential to the success of NYU and its PhD students.
Conclusion
Thus, the United States’ dominant position in the mathematics community, at least in large part, traces back to Adolf Hitler’s expulsion of Jewish academics from Germany. However, there is more to the story than the bare narration of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies, the heroic actions of the Emergency Committee, and the positive impact of migrant scholars on American mathematics. This fascinating piece of history discloses a deeper message; that is, the ties that bind the scientific community can withstand racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination.
This story ought to serve as a warning: nations that choose to enact discriminatory policies will, in the same stroke, effectively abandon the pursuit of scientific knowledge and innovation. The true scientific community unites in the quest for knowledge and innovation; it cares not for differences in belief, color, ethnicity and nationality. An attempt to divide persons based on such differences may stifle the pursuit of scientific knowledge, that relies so heavily on diversity, cooperation, and community. As this story shows, scientists can rise above discrimination and will protect fellow scholars as brother and sister. Germany, once the force in mathematics, suffered at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis; the United States, through principles of inclusion and generosity, developed a thriving community that remains in place today. But do not just take my word for it: at a banquet in Göttingen in 1934, the Nazi Minister of Culture asked Göttingen professor David Hilbert whether the mathematics institute at Göttingen had indeed suffered since the removal of the Jews. Hilbert responded: “Suffered? It hasn’t suffered, Herr Minister. It just doesn’t exist anymore.” [13]
David Hilbert
Sources
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[3] Gerald L. Alexanderson. "Review." The American Mathematical Monthly 119, no. 10 (2012): 888-91. doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.119.10.888.
[4] Lamberti, Marjorie. "The Reception of Refugee Scholars from Nazi Germany in America: Philanthropy and Social Change in Higher Education." Jewish Social Studies, New Series, 12, no. 3 (2006): 157-92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4467750.
[5] National Academy of Sciences. 2003. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 82. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10683.
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[8] P. S. "The New Mathematics--A Lecture by Professor Bieberbach." Science 80, no. 2063 (1934): 35-36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1658687.
[9] Reingold, Nathan. "Refugee Mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933–1941: Reception and Reaction." Annals of Science 38, no. 3 (1981): 313-38. doi:10.1080/00033798100200251.
[10] Reuben Hersh. "Under-represented Then Over-represented: A Memoir of Jews in American Mathematics." The College Mathematics Journal 41, no. 1 (2010): 2-9. doi:10.4169/074683410x475065.
[11] Rockefeller Foundation Archives: http://rockarch.org/collections/rf/refugee2.php
[12] Rolf Nossum & Jan Kotůlek (2015) The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning as a patron of refugee mathematicians, BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, 30:2, 153-167, DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2015.1010778
[13] Rowe, David E. ""Jewish Mathematics" at Gottingen in the Era of Felix Klein." Isis77, no. 3 (1986): 422-49. doi:10.1086/354204.
[14] Shields, Brittany Anne. "A Mathematical Life: Richard Courant, New York University and Scientific Diplomacy in Twentieth Century America." Order No. 3709551, University of Pennsylvania, 2015, http://newman.richmond.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1699101968?accountid=14731
[15] Waldinger, Fabian. "Quality Matters: The Expulsion of Professors and the Consequences for PhD Student Outcomes in Nazi Germany." Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 4 (2010): 787-831. doi:10.1086/655976.
