Celebratio Mathematica

Cal Moore has giv­en us a work of ad­mir­able schol­ar­ship that be­longs in the lib­rary of any math­em­at­ics his­tor­i­an and should be in­ter­est­ing to a range of oth­er math­em­aticians, from those who spent part of their ca­reers at Berke­ley, to those who just want to see if they or their friends are men­tioned (many are).

The book starts with the ori­gins of the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia, Berke­ley, and con­cludes (ex­cept for some end­notes) in 1985 with the es­tab­lish­ment of Berke­ley’s Math­em­at­ic­al Sci­ences Re­search In­sti­tute1 (due in great part to the work of Moore). I will out­line some of the high­lights and add a few stor­ies and pic­tures.

UC Berke­ley was cre­ated in 1868 as the off­spring of two par­ents. One was the Col­lege of Cali­for­nia, foun­ded in 1855 and loc­ated on the cur­rent site of the Berke­ley cam­pus. The site (and even­tu­al town) was named in 1866 after the Ir­ish philo­soph­er Bish­op George Berke­ley, a pat­ron of edu­ca­tion who also had a hand in found­ing Kings Col­lege (now Columbia Uni­versity) and the Col­lege of Phil­adelphia (now Uni­versity of Pennsylvania). The Bish­op is also known in math­em­at­ics for his at­tack on flux­ions, the basis of New­ton’s cal­cu­lus.

The oth­er par­ent was the Ag­ri­cul­tur­al, Min­ing, and Mech­an­ic­al Arts Col­lege, chartered by the Cali­for­nia le­gis­lature un­der the Mor­rill Act, which fun­ded this land-grant col­lege. (It is in­ter­est­ing to note that Yale Uni­versity was also a land-grant in­sti­tu­tion, re­ceiv­ing funds through its col­lege of forestry.)

The former par­ent had land and the lat­ter had money, and after a dif­fi­cult court­ship they united to form Berke­ley. Yale gradu­ates played a large role dur­ing these years and it is spec­u­lated that the school col­ors, blue and gold, came from the school col­or of Yale and the gold of the Golden Gate, the golden hills, and the gold of Cali­for­nia. However, all math­em­at­ics de­part­ment chairs from 1882 to 1954 held Har­vard de­grees.

For a few dec­ades Berke­ley was un­dis­tin­guished as a re­search uni­versity. Pro­fess­ors were paid US\$3,600 per year, or less, and taught five courses per term, mostly fol­low­ing the West Point cur­riculum. This was two years of what we would call pre-cal­cu­lus and then a year of cal­cu­lus. The col­lege al­gebra text, by Dav­ies, was not liked and a tra­di­tion began with a night­time fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion through cam­pus with a coffin con­tain­ing the of­fend­ing book, which was then “cremated” to song and oratory. The tra­di­tion grew to in­clude oth­er un­pop­u­lar texts.

By the early 1930s the phys­ics and chem­istry de­part­ments at Berke­ley had achieved con­sid­er­able renown (think of Lawrence and Op­pen­heimer), and it had been real­ized that the math de­part­ment had fallen far be­hind and something needed to be done. Grif­fith Evans, chair at Rice Uni­versity, was the agreed-upon choice to re­vital­ize the math de­part­ment, but ne­go­ti­ations to bring him to Berke­ley were lengthy. A primary is­sue was salary, and this be­ing the De­pres­sion, a grand of­fer of US\$9,000 was made, but with the pro­viso that it would likely be sub­ject to a 10% cut by the le­gis­lature, and pos­sibly as much as a one-third cut. Since Evans was fa­cing the same 10% cut at Rice, US\$8,100 was ac­cep­ted after he was as­sured that it would be cut no fur­ther. (If the days of ac­tu­al salary cuts seem im­possible now, it should be re­membered that fac­ulty salar­ies did not nearly keep up with in­fla­tion dur­ing the 1970s, and one source claims that fac­ulty lost 24% of their pur­chas­ing power dur­ing those years.)

Evans suc­cess­fully re­cruited Charles Mor­rey, Hans Lewy, and Jerzy Ney­man in the 1930s, and the de­part­ment had taken a long step to­wards its fu­ture em­in­ence. Dav­id Black­well might have also come to Berke­ley at that time (he did later in 1955), but an of­fer died due to the op­pos­i­tion of Evans’ wife, who felt that “she could not in­vite a Negro to her house or at­tend a de­part­ment func­tion at which one was present.”

In 1936 the math de­part­ment still had no sec­ret­ar­ies, but Evans was able to ob­tain a half-time po­s­i­tion for Sarah Hal­lam, at the rate of US\$400 per half-year. Com­par­ing her salary to Evans’ US\$8,100 per year shows that in those days there was a big­ger dis­crep­ancy between staff and pro­fess­or­i­al salar­ies than there is today. Sarah Hal­lam presided over con­sid­er­able growth in the size of the staff and ran the de­part­ment with an iron hand un­til she re­tired in 1972. She died in 1994, leav­ing US\$300,000 for gradu­ate fel­low­ships.

Un­der Evans the de­part­ment grew slowly through World War II and then more quickly un­til Evans stepped down as chair in 1949, hav­ing ad­ded Al­fred Tarski, Raphael Robin­son, Der­rick H. Lehmer, and John Kel­ley. In those days the stand­ard teach­ing load was three courses per semester, and of­fice space was scarce with four in­struct­ors to an of­fice. (I re­call Irving Ka­plansky telling me that when he went to Har­vard in 1940, pro­fess­ors did not have of­fices, but worked at home and held of­fice hours and met stu­dents in a com­mon room.)

The fam­ous (loy­alty) oath con­tro­versy began in 1949, died down in 1952, and in the words of Clark Kerr, “caused the single greatest con­front­a­tion between a fac­ulty and its board of trust­ees in Amer­ic­an his­tory.” The au­thor de­votes a chapter to giv­ing a bal­anced ac­count of the con­tro­versy, which I will sum­mar­ize here.

The oath stated:

I do sol­emnly swear (or af­firm) that I will sup­port the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States and the Con­sti­tu­tion of the State of Cali­for­nia, and that I will faith­fully dis­charge the du­ties of my of­fice ac­cord­ing to the best of my abil­ity; that I am not a mem­ber of the Com­mun­ist Party or un­der any oath, or a party to any agree­ment, or un­der any com­mit­ment that is in con­flict with my ob­lig­a­tion un­der this oath.

The part be­fore the semi­colon had al­ways been re­quired of pub­lic em­ploy­ees in Cali­for­nia, but the Re­gents of UC ad­ded the lat­ter part in June 1949.

Since 1940 it had been the policy of the re­gents to ban em­ploy­ment of mem­bers of the Com­mun­ist Party, and since this had caused no fur­or, the ad­di­tion to the oath was not ex­pec­ted to be a prob­lem, but rather a form of im­ple­ment­a­tion of the ban on mem­bers. However, it quickly be­came a power struggle between the fac­ulty and the re­gents that came to dom­in­ate fac­ulty life.

The is­sue was not the ban against mem­ber­ship in the Com­mun­ist Party, for 79% of the fac­ulty voted in fa­vor of that, and some of the most dis­tin­guished op­pon­ents of the loy­alty oath stated that they non­ethe­less favored the ban. Rather, the op­pos­i­tion was fueled by the fact that only uni­versity pro­fess­ors (among state em­ploy­ees) were re­quired to sign an oath, amid grow­ing dis­agree­ment over the de­gree of risk posed by Com­mun­ists and sym­path­izers in the U.S.

Even­tu­ally, all but 36 pro­fess­ors signed the loy­alty oath, and then the is­sue shif­ted to wheth­er the fac­ulty or the re­gents had the au­thor­ity to de­term­ine the fit­ness of a per­son to be a mem­ber of the fac­ulty. The Com­mit­tee on Priv­ilege and Ten­ure held hear­ings on the 36 non-sign­ers and re­com­men­ded against dis­missal of 31 and for dis­missal of the oth­er 5. The com­mit­tee found no evid­ence of dis­loy­alty in any of the non-sign­ers, but the 5 who de­clined to dis­cuss the is­sues were those re­com­men­ded for dis­missal. The re­gents at first up­held the com­mit­tee but then on a 12–10 vote de­cided to dis­miss all 36.

After the re­gents’ vote, 12 de­cided to sign, and 24 were dis­missed, among them John Kel­ley, Hans Lewy, Stefan Peters, and Pau­line Sperry; also, as­sist­ant pro­fess­ors Charles Stein and Paul Ga­rabedi­an resigned be­fore be­ing re­quired to sign the oath.

Leg­al battles were fought, and the Cali­for­nia le­gis­lature passed a slightly stronger ver­sion of an oath, the Lever­ing oath, which ap­plied to all pub­lic em­ploy­ees, not just the UC fac­ulty. In 1953, the Su­preme Court ruled in fa­vor of the fac­ulty, but on a nar­row ground that the Lever­ing oath su­per­seded the re­gents’ oath. The non-sign­ers were then offered re­in­state­ment provided they signed the Lever­ing oath. Many ac­cep­ted re­in­state­ment, in­clud­ing Kel­ley and Lewy, but signed the Lever­ing oath with great re­luct­ance.

Look­ing back, the battle over the loy­alty oath res­ted on the dif­fer­ing views of mem­ber­ship in the Com­mun­ist Party and what that meant about fit­ness to be a mem­ber of the fac­ulty. In ex­treme forms one side saw mem­ber­ship as just a form of pro­gress­ive or left­ist polit­ics that should en­joy the tra­di­tion­al pro­tec­tions, but the oth­er side saw mem­ber­ship as join­ing a group un­der the con­trol of a for­eign power that ad­voc­ated the vi­ol­ent over­throw of our gov­ern­ment. That the fo­cus be­came a sig­na­ture on a re­l­at­ively worth­less piece of pa­per is curi­ous.

However, it could be ar­gued that the most im­port­ant out­come of the con­tro­versy was this: be­fore 1950, ten­ure was a cus­tom but it was not writ­ten in any reg­u­la­tions, but after the loy­alty oath and the dis­missals, con­sid­er­able ef­fort led, in 1958, to a form­al re­gents’ policy of ten­ure.

The con­tro­versy over the loy­alty oath could have sent the math de­part­ment in­to de­cline, but in­stead a sig­ni­fic­ant ex­pan­sion in quant­ity and qual­ity began in the late 1950s un­der chair John Kel­ley and chan­cel­lor Clark Kerr. Kerr wrote in his mem­oirs that he had con­cluded “if a cam­pus was to have one pree­m­in­ent de­part­ment in mod­ern times, it should be math­em­at­ics.” Berke­ley had been weak in geo­metry/to­po­logy and al­gebra, but the ad­di­tions of S.-S. Chern, Ed­win Span­i­er, and Steve Smale in the former, and Ger­hard Hoch­schild and Max­well Rosen­licht in the lat­ter, to­geth­er with oth­er not­ables, brought Berke­ley to a high level by the time that the un­rest of the late 1960s began.

Cali­for­nia was full of op­tim­ism in the 1950s and early 1960s, with dams and free­ways con­struc­ted, and three new UC cam­puses — Irvine, San Diego, and Santa Bar­bara — planned and built. The uni­versity switched from semesters to quar­ters in 1967, so as to have a sum­mer term on an equal foot­ing with the oth­er quar­ters. This im­plied more fac­ulty to teach the ex­tra term. (The sum­mer term died from lack of funds, and Berke­ley switched back to semesters in 1983, but made such a hash of the switch that the oth­er eight cam­puses re­fused to switch and are to this day on quar­ters.)

The math de­part­ment grew from about 20 full-time em­ploy­ees in 1955 to 41 FTE in 1960, and plans were formed for fur­ther ex­pan­sion and a new build­ing, to be named after Grif­fith Evans. Plans in­cluded in­creas­ing the num­ber of gradu­ate stu­dents in all areas to over half the stu­dent body at Berke­ley, with a con­com­it­ant in­crease in math gradu­ate stu­dents and hence math fac­ulty to 110 FTE.

The math de­part­ment had long been in cramped quar­ters and was still spread over five build­ings in­clud­ing T4, which was one of 12 tem­por­ary wood frame build­ings con­struc­ted after WWII. These were only gradu­ally torn down, with T4 last­ing in­to this cen­tury. I spent the sum­mer of 1966 in T4 with a fine bunch of oth­er young to­po­lo­gists in­clud­ing Den­nis Sul­li­van, George Cooke, Greg Brumfiel, An­thony Phil­lips, and oth­ers; des­pite the aged build­ing with its worn wooden floors, T4 had great at­mo­sphere.

Plans for Evans in­creased through the 1960s un­til a con­tract for the present massive build­ing was let in 1967. The cost was about US\$9 mil­lion dol­lars, and US\$2.4 mil­lion came from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which at that time (less than a dec­ade after Sput­nik) wished to sub­sid­ize in­fra­struc­ture for gradu­ate edu­ca­tion (ima­gine get­ting money for a build­ing now!).

Co­in­cid­ent­ally, Ron­ald Re­agan took over the gov­ernor’s of­fice in Janu­ary 1967, and grand plans soon came to a grind­ing halt. The math de­part­ment reached a max­im­um of nearly 80 FTE in 1972, but then 13 FTE dis­ap­peared that year via six re­tire­ments (in­clud­ing Mor­rey) and the loss of sev­en un­filled po­s­i­tions. Math­em­at­ics, in Berke­ley and else­where, has nev­er re­gained the heady days of the early, post-Sput­nik 1960s. The 1970s brought years of around 800 new Ph.D.’s, around 200 re­tire­ments at U.S. in­sti­tu­tions, and a ser­i­ous job crunch. Berke­ley went from en­ter­ing gradu­ate classes of about 100 in 1971 and 1972, to a more reas­on­able 60, un­til 1991 when it dropped to an av­er­age of about 35 new stu­dents per year. Gradu­ate ex­pect­a­tions changed also, for many ar­rived at Berke­ley in the early 1970s without any prom­ise of mon­et­ary sup­port, where­as after 1990 it be­came nor­mal to prom­ise four to five years of sup­port, which of­ten meant six.

When Evans Hall was fin­ished in 1971, it was seen as a “bru­tal­ist build­ing” and “aes­thet­ic­ally chal­lenged”, and it was nick­named Fort Evans. In keep­ing with the times, a self-gen­er­ated group in the math de­part­ment de­cided to paint some walls. John Rhodes or­gan­ized a sem­in­ar titled “Fas­cism and Ar­chi­tec­ture” (with slides of Hitler wav­ing to the crowds from the bal­conies of Ber­lin build­ings) and af­ter­wards handed out paint­brushes to all (in­clud­ing Sarah Hal­lam).

Thus began a series of mur­als on the in­teri­or walls, which many vis­it­ors to the Berke­ley de­part­ment have seen: “Death of Archimedes”, “La Mort de Galois”, a curve in the thrice-punc­tured plane painted by Den­nis Sul­li­van and Bill Thur­ston, and a large paint­ing of the Reeb fo­li­ation by Richard Bas­sein. Des­pite some op­pos­i­tion from the ad­min­is­tra­tion, and some bills (nev­er paid) for dam­ages to the walls, most of the mur­als sur­vived for dec­ades and when de­teri­or­ated were pho­to­graphed for pos­ter­ity as art worth pre­serving. One ap­peared on the cov­er of the March 2003 No­tices to ac­com­pany Lee Mosh­er’s column “WHAT IS…a train track?”.

The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of polit­ic­al tur­moil in the U.S., and this was re­flec­ted at Berke­ley. The math de­part­ment may have been the most act­ive in op­pos­ing the Vi­et­nam war and sup­port­ing the Free Speech Move­ment. One of Re­agan’s elec­tion planks was to “Clean up the mess in Berke­ley”, and the Na­tion­al Guard was called in to demon­strate, well, something. Sul­li­van re­calls half-tracks sta­tioned just off cam­pus, and tear gas oc­ca­sion­ally waf­ted in through open win­dows dur­ing sem­inars. The de­part­ment ar­dently em­braced af­firm­at­ive ac­tion, over­whelm­ingly voted that it was the sense of the de­part­ment not to ac­cept De­fense De­part­ment con­tracts, and sup­por­ted the cus­todi­ans who went on strike for two months. En­roll­ment dropped some­what as some par­ents thought Berke­ley was not ap­pro­pri­ate for their chil­dren, al­though the act­iv­ism at Berke­ley may have in­duced oth­ers to come. Fac­ulty re­cruit­ment was not harmed.

On the light­er side, two faded pho­to­graphs (not from the book) show the abil­it­ies of Dor­is Fre­drick­son, the chair’s sec­ret­ary (and now wife of the book’s au­thor), at design­ing and sew­ing cos­tumes. In the first we see the chair, John Ad­dis­on with crown and scepter, and Serge Lang in jester’s garb, no doubt try­ing to in­duce the king to em­brace one of his many causes.

In the second, Jim Si­mons (un­der “Satan”), then chair at the State Uni­versity of New York at Stony Brook, is try­ing, with a wad of money in his right hand, to lure the au­thor to Stony Brook, while the Berke­ley chair, again John Ad­dis­on (un­der ”God”), tries to re­tain Cal Moore.

Dor­is Fre­d­er­ick­son also ap­pears as the au­thor of an in­ter­est­ing let­ter (pho­to­graphed in the book) to the Moth­er Func­tor, an ir­rev­er­ent de­part­ment pub­lic­a­tion, in which she gives the per­spect­ive of a sec­ret­ary.

Life at Berke­ley turned quiet in the last three dec­ades, after some dif­fi­culties in the 1970s over money. Dur­ing two years, no state em­ploy­ee got a raise, and these were days of con­sid­er­able in­fla­tion, some­times over 10%. And then in a third year, the le­gis­lature singled out only the em­ploy­ees of the uni­versity and did not give them a raise, with Jerry Brown, then gov­ernor, re­mark­ing that the pro­fes­sion offered psych­ic re­wards that made up for the loss of in­come.

Life at Berke­ley turned quiet in the last three dec­ades, after some dif­fi­culties in the 1970s over money. Dur­ing two years, no state em­ploy­ee got a raise, and these were days of con­sid­er­able in­fla­tion, some­times over 10%. And then in a third year, the le­gis­lature singled out only the em­ploy­ees of the uni­versity and did not give them a raise, with Jerry Brown, then gov­ernor, re­mark­ing that the pro­fes­sion offered psych­ic re­wards that made up for the loss of in­come.

If you have con­nec­tions to Berke­ley or are merely in­ter­ested in how a great math de­part­ment came in­to be­ing, then this thor­ough and well writ­ten book is at least worth a browse, and you may find the en­tire book as en­joy­able as I did.