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Celebratio Mathematica

Albert S. Schwarz

To Albert Schwarz

by John Schwarz

Dear Al­bert,

I wish to use your im­pend­ing re­tire­ment as an op­por­tun­ity to con­grat­u­late you for your achieve­ments dur­ing your il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer. It is im­press­ive that you were able to trans­ition so suc­cess­fully from the So­viet Uni­on to the United States without in­ter­rupt­ing your re­search. It is a priv­ilege to have in­ter­ac­ted with you dur­ing your years in the US. I was glad that I could par­ti­cip­ate in cel­eb­ra­tions of your 70th and 80th birth­days at UC Dav­is and that you were able to par­ti­cip­ate in the cel­eb­ra­tion of my 60th at Cal­tech. I ap­pre­ci­ated the kind things that you said to me on that oc­ca­sion. I also have fond memor­ies of your vis­it (to­geth­er with Lucy!) to Cal­tech in 2008.

Our ap­proaches to sci­ence are some­what dif­fer­ent since you ap­proach phys­ics as a math­em­atician, and I ap­proach math­em­at­ics as a the­or­et­ic­al phys­i­cist. It is great that we could meet in the middle and find top­ics of mu­tu­al in­terest to dis­cuss. There is no doubt that your dis­cov­er­ies have made a big im­pact in my world.

I wish you all the best for your post-re­tire­ment years.

John Schwarz

John Schwarz is Har­old Brown Pro­fess­or of The­or­et­ic­al Phys­ics, Emer­it­us, in the Di­vi­sion of Phys­ics, Math­em­at­ics and As­tro­nomy at Cal­tech.