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Celebratio Mathematica

Walter D. Neumann

My early life

by Walter David Neumann

I was born in Caerphilly, Wales, UK, on Janu­ary 1, 1946. I was the fourth of five chil­dren: Irene (b. 1938), Peter (b. 1940), Bar­bara (b. 1943), me (b. 1946), and Daniel (b. 1951). My par­ents, Bernhard Her­mann Neu­mann (b. 1909) and Hanna Neu­mann (b. 1914, née Hanna von Caemmer­er), both group-the­or­ists, were born in Ber­lin. My fath­er went to the UK in 1933 be­cause of the prob­lems he faced as a Jew. My moth­er, not Jew­ish but very anti-Nazi, stayed in Ger­many un­til just be­fore the war began. She had met my fath­er in 1933 in a work­ing group at the uni­versity and they be­came en­gaged in 1934. Since mar­riages between Jews and non-Jews were against the law, their en­gage­ment was dan­ger­ous, and they had friends who helped them to con­tact each oth­er by let­ters. They mar­ried in Cardiff in 1938. Some time later, my fath­er was in­terned as an en­emy ali­en but then re­leased in­to the Brit­ish army. My moth­er was then in Ox­ford and later Caerphilly near Cardiff, and, after the war was over, they moved to Hull. So un­til 1958 I lived in Hull. We all learned mu­sic. I think we all learned some pi­ano and re­cord­er. Peter also played vi­ol­in and I star­ted learn­ing vi­ol­in then too.

Hull

In Hull, when we were young, we had a dart­board in our house, and oc­ca­sion­ally when we played darts we would miss the dart­board and hit the plaster wall. My moth­er re­painted that wall, but holes re­turned as it dried. My moth­er de­cided I must have thrown darts at the wall after she had painted and she in­sisted that I should tell the truth; oth­er­wise we would not have the darts any more. She made me stay in the garden un­til “I told the truth”. Peter and Bar­bara knew that none of us was re­spons­ible but they didn’t say. I fi­nally said “I did it”, and my moth­er hugged me for it, which I hated (she nev­er hugged in gen­er­al). Soon after, Peter told me it was good that I’d said I did it, since oth­er­wise we would no longer have darts. I’d al­ways looked up to Peter in the past, but after that I didn’t think as much of him.

My first school, primary school, was in Brick­nell Av­en­ue, Hull. The school had a field and my fath­er joked that the field was rolled up after school was done and un­rolled again when school star­ted. The field had a small mound and we would fight to be on the top. I was of­ten on top.

In Au­tumn 1957 to Sum­mer 1958 I star­ted at King­ston High School, Hull. I don’t re­mem­ber much about that ex­cept that we would throw mud-balls at each oth­er in the field be­fore classes star­ted, and that I played on the chess team, and that I got good grades.

Our house was 75 West­bourne Av­en­ue. The Av­en­ues, West­bourne, Park and Vic­tor­ia, are very well known in Hull. For ex­ample, our house was near Dorothy L. Say­ers’ house in West­bourne Av­en­ue (though that was be­fore we were there). We had friends in Vic­tor­ia Av­en­ue where we climbed trees in the garden and played games in the al­leys be­hind the houses (there were al­leys between each of the Av­en­ues). They were Mark Tully and his sis­ter (whose name I for­get) and an­oth­er girl.

My fath­er had a po­s­i­tion in Manchester from 1948–61, so he was in Manchester when classes were open, and on week­ends he would take the train, or oc­ca­sion­ally bike over the Pen­nines (a hun­dred-mile ride), to come back to Hull.

I learned to ride a bike in the al­leys: my fath­er ran be­hind me keep­ing me up. After sev­er­al days of do­ing that he let go, and near the end of the al­ley I found he was far be­hind and I was bik­ing on my own.

Our fam­ily did a lot of bik­ing on week­ends as well as on hol­i­days, and we of­ten stayed overnight in youth hos­tels. We usu­ally col­lec­ted mush­rooms — in­clud­ing gi­ant puff­balls — along the way to eat in the even­ing. My par­ents and Bar­bara and I (and, once, a math friend of my par­ents) would bike every sum­mer from Hull to the Uni­versity of St. An­drews in Scot­land. My par­ents would stay at St. An­drews for a week-long group-the­ory con­fer­ence while Bar­bara and I then biked farther in­to Scot­land, some­times get­ting milk still warm straight from a farm on a hill that we knew, be­fore we re­turned to St. An­drews and back to Hull.

My fath­er liked to joke, and one of his fa­vor­ites was how we liked to go rid­ing on well boiled icicles, a spoon­er­ism.

Manchester

In 1958 we moved to a house on Dane Road, in Sale, near Manchester. We had a garden be­low the back of the house with a lot of apple trees. In the sum­mer when I was 12 I made a small wooden slid­ing green­house with a con­crete floor in the garden where I kept cacti and suc­cu­lents, and I joined a Cac­tus and Suc­cu­lent So­ci­ety. We had a very small pond there too, with bricks around it, and frogs gathered in it when it was no longer cold.

In the Fall of 1958 I star­ted at the “Cheadle Hul­me School for the Orphans of Ware­house­men and Clerks” (now just “Cheadle Hul­me School”). I was there un­til 1961. Every school day I biked the 9 or 10 miles each way. There was of­ten dense fog, a couple of times so foggy that I was faster than the cars. After the first year there my par­ents al­lowed me to have cof­fee be­fore school, and sud­denly the steep hill up to Cheadle Hul­me felt much less steep.

In the first year one of our sub­jects was wood­work. There was one boy whom the wood­work teach­er took pleas­ure in spank­ing with a wooden board, while we were forced to watch. None of us had the cour­age to say any­thing about it. The teach­er was fired later, prob­ably the next year, but I have al­ways re­gret­ted I hadn’t had the cour­age to tell oth­er teach­ers what was go­ing on.

Later I was al­lowed to work alone in the chem­istry of­fice. Ni­tro­gen trii­od­ide, when damp, is OK but when it dries it ex­plodes if as much as a feath­er touches it. I made it us­ing iod­ine with aqueous am­mo­nia. I was in Miss Mee­han’s class and I had a little of the stuff on my desk, and Miss Mee­han happened to touch it, ex­plod­ing it. I am sure it stung, and I was sure I’d be kicked out of school, but after star­ing at me for a few seconds, she went on with the class.

I biked a few times in­to Wales with a friend of mine, and at least once I biked from Manchester to Lon­don and back to vis­it my grand­par­ents in Lon­don (I had of­ten been sent to stay with them for a few days).

New York

My par­ents and Peter and I went for a year to New York (1961/62). They were work­ing in Man­hat­tan at the Cour­ant In­sti­tute of Math­em­at­ic­al Sci­ences, and I took classes nearby at NYU. I learned some Ger­man, among oth­er things, and I helped stu­dents there in math and phys­ics by secretly passing notes to them in the classroom, giv­ing an­swers to prob­lems.

We lived in a house in New Rochelle for the year. I took the train to Man­hat­tan from there, and ate my break­fast on the train; it was bread and my fa­vor­ite cheese, a very smelly one, and people would try to sit away from me. I of­ten had lunch in Wash­ing­ton Square Park, just next to NYU, and an older male made friends with me. I was na­ive: it took me quite some time to real­ize that he was gay and was try­ing to make a pass at me.

My par­ents had learned to drive shortly be­fore that trip, and driv­ing with them was a bit fright­en­ing. In the fall they drove us up north to see the views and I was amazed by the fall col­ors of the trees. In the UK the col­ors are noth­ing like it.

I had a bor­rowed vi­ol­in and I went once a week for prac­tice, walk­ing across Man­hat­tan’s Cent­ral Park. Someone warned me that it was dan­ger­ous in those days to cross Cent­ral Park, then joked that I was prob­ably safe, be­cause people would as­sume that my vi­ol­in case was a gun case. (Later, when I came back to Bonn after some time in Re­gens­burg, I dis­covered that someone had stolen my vi­ol­in, as well as books and oth­er things. I was dev­ast­ated and gave up the vi­ol­in and just stayed with the re­cord­er.)

Freiburg

I was go­ing to go to Ad­elaide Uni­versity the fol­low­ing year, but schools start in late Janu­ary in Aus­tralia, so I first went for half a year to Freiburg in Bre­is­gau where we had sev­er­al re­l­at­ives. I had a room in a house in Freiburg and I was al­lowed to use the bath only once a week, which I found very strange since I was used to wash­ing every day. I went to some classes (in Ger­man of course) and I of­ten went to the movies.

I’d bike every Sat­urday to Günter­stal for tea, where my Tante Car­ola lived, and some­times made the long bike ride up to Waldkirch, where my grand­moth­er lived.

I went ski­ing in Freiburg on week­ends when there was snow. There was a bus to the Freiburg ski re­sort and they provided food. It was cheap­er to take the bus and ski for the week­end than to stay at the apart­ment and eat there.

Adelaide

Early in 1963 I flew to Ad­elaide to go to Ad­elaide Uni­versity, where I was start­ing in the second year.

The first sum­mer I was asked to teach a young boy on a large sheep ranch north of Ad­elaide. I was teach­ing him Lat­in among oth­er things. I ate in the kit­chen for break­fast and lunch, but in the even­ing I’d be in the din­ing room with the fam­ily and had to have jack­et, shirt and tie — and con­ver­sa­tion. In the af­ter­noon we some­times shot ga­lahs which came in great flocks to eat the seeds. They would fly up when we shot and come down in flocks again in less than a minute. I had nev­er had a gun be­fore but I was a much bet­ter shoot­er than the boy. In fact he was not very good at any­thing, which was lucky for him. I found out later from someone in Can­berra that they had had an older son on the sheep ranch who was sent to Ox­ford un­der a lot of pres­sure; he there­fore drowned him­self in the river Thames.

At the Uni­versity they gave us rooms in North Ad­elaide — we were two to a room — and we would walk or bike down to the Uni­versity. Then the next two years I shared a house with a friend on the south end of North Ad­elaide. A couple of times we walked up to the top of Mount Lofty and back.

I was al­lowed to use the Uni­versity com­puter on week­ends. One of the fac­ulty asked me to use the com­puter to help him with his work (he paid me in beer). In the third year I was asked to teach a class of adults (at least two or three years older than I was). I think they were a bit taken aback, but they got used to it and I did well.

I re­turned to Europe via the ocean from Aus­tralia with my B.A. Hons de­gree in an odd way. First I sailed from Aus­tralia to New Zea­l­and, then back to Aus­tralia, and from there via In­dia (where we stopped for shop­ping half a day; I bought a shirt) and then on­wards to Italy. From there I took trains to get to Bonn, Ger­many.

Bonn

In 1966 I came to the Uni­versity of Bonn, Ger­many, to start my gradu­ate stud­ies. I was giv­en a room in a house in the coun­try to the north­w­est of Bonn, shared by an­oth­er stu­dent who also liked mu­sic. There were straw­berry fields not far away and we some­times walked in­to the fields to help ourselves. Later in that year I got a room in Ip­pen­dorf some­where on the road “Auf dem Ste­inchen”. I don’t re­mem­ber much about it oth­er than that, on Decem­ber 8, 1966, I ob­tained my Ger­man driver’s li­cense.

(I still have that li­cense, since in Ger­many they last for ever and I used to put it in my wal­let whenev­er I was in Ger­many. By now it is hardly read­able, though I ac­tu­ally used it in Par­is about fif­teen years ago, when my money and cards were stolen and I needed to rent a car.)

Later I moved to a room in Fries­dorf (I think it was in the Elsaser­strasse, near to the tram back to Bonn). The hus­band of the house was hor­rible, a real Nazi who hated colored people, but the wife later came in­to my room to apo­lo­gize, al­most in tears, say­ing that she had not known how bad Nazism had been, and that she didn’t mind that a girl of col­or came to vis­it me. I think the girl wanted to marry me, but I wasn’t ready to get mar­ried.

One of the pro­fess­ors, I have for­got­ten his name, was go­ing to the USA and sold me his car, a Ford Taun­us. About two years later I had a room in a house in the vil­lage of Vil­li­prott, and I would drive to and from the Uni­versity by car. After work­ing late one day I fell half-a-asleep while driv­ing around a bend. I swerved and the car rolled over and landed right-side up in a ditch with its front win­dow off. I walked down the road un­til I found a po­lice­man, who drove me to my apart­ment and told me which car-lot my dam­aged Taun­us would be towed to.

The next day I took a taxi to the car-lot, and while I was look­ing, someone asked me if I’d like his car, also a Ford Taun­us, for a small price, since he was just about to go in­to the army. His was in much bet­ter shape than mine, so I ac­cep­ted. A day or two later I sold my dam­aged car for the same price, so I had gained by be­ing sleepy!

In Ger­many after World War II cof­fee was al­ways pale. I once asked in an Itali­an res­taur­ant in Bonn if I could buy dark-roast beans from them, and they said they bought theirs from Zuntz Cof­fee (which was a whole­sale com­pany in Bonn and later also in Ber­lin). So I bought from the whole­sale Zuntz Cof­fee a won­der­ful dark cof­fee at “Grünen Weg 78”. It happened to be less than five minutes from my shared of­fice in Ber­ing­strasse, close to the Botan­ic­al Garden of Bonn. The so-called “A. Zuntz sel. Wwe” (short for “se­lige wit­we”) star­ted in 1837 in Bonn and it be­came for a while the greatest cof­fee-roast­er in Ger­many. (A com­mon joke is that a math­em­atician is a ma­chine for turn­ing cof­fee in­to the­or­ems.) In World War II much of the cof­fee-roast­er build­ing had been des­troyed, and some­time between 1970 and 1980 Zuntz Cof­fee dis­ap­peared and the build­ing I knew was re­placed by a cloth­ing shop.

More about Bonn

I re­ceived my PhD with Pro­fess­or Friedrich Hirzebruch in 1969. I had a lot of friends from the start. I met Silke Suter and her friend Di­et­rich in 1966. Don Za­gi­er, a bril­liant math­em­atician and a very good friend of ours, later mar­ried Silke.

Mat­thi­as Kreck, who was the son of a theo­lo­gian, did math­em­at­ics, and he stud­ied theo­logy from 1972 to 1976. He is also an ex­cel­lent cel­list, and we some­times played to­geth­er.

Oth­er friends were Gor­don Wasser­man from Amer­ica, who later stayed in Ger­many; Czes and Anne Kos­niowski from the UK, who came for about half a year to Bonn (we vis­ited them at least twice later in New­castle, where they raised chick­ens in their garden); Peter and Susanna Klein, who di­vorced after a while (Peter died early); Erich Ossa, who later went to the Uni­versity of Co­logne with “Doc­tor Erich Ossa” on his front door, com­plain­ing that this made things more ex­pens­ive, but he kept the “Doc­tor” any­way (he also later wrote a pa­per with Mat­thi­as Kreck, Ul­rich Kar­ras and me); Karl-Heinz Knapp, who col­lec­ted wine and stored it in a spe­cially in­su­lated wine cel­lar (he stored mine there for me too, since he wanted it as full as pos­sible); Hans­peter Kraft who came to Bonn in 1970 to 1979 with a break in Re­gens­burg for two years; and John Scherk (Ca­na­dian) who did a fool­ish thing with his car. To see what would hap­pen he de­cided to drive along a slope next to the road, which flipped his car over. He was fine, but his friend in the car was hurt.

Dur­ing my time in Bonn, I drove at least twice to Mu­nich where my cous­in Hanna von Caemmer­er was study­ing law at the time, and once or twice she vis­ited me. She also met me at the IAS in 1971. She worked later in Karls­ruhe as a judge and is now re­tired. I still of­ten vis­it her when I am in Ger­many.

Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS)

From 1971 to 1973 I was at the IAS in Prin­ceton for the first time. I met Anne Waldron in 1972 and we mar­ried in Au­gust 26 1972 (so she is now Anne Neu­mann).