Reminiscences about the 1930s (Q1345642)

Ralph Philips (born 1913), Professor of Mathematics at Stanford since 1960, reveals the tough period of the 1930s in USA from the perspective of a young Jewish mathematician. During his pursuit for an academic post he was faced with multiple frustrations, largely due to the then prevailing anti-Semitism. Happy to acknowledge the few exceptional rewarding incidents that occured to him since he was an undergraduate in UCLA, or as a Ph. D. student of T. H. Hildebrandt at Michigan in 1936, the author points out bluntly the effects of racism and prejudice that characterized the leading mathematical communities at Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Washington and Stanford until the early 1840s. The picture is definetely not a pretty one.