The theory of lattices, initiated by Dedekind in the past centu- ry, and
revived in the thirties by Garrett Birkhoff, F. Klein-Barmen, ore, and
von Neumann, is only in our time coming into its own. The fledgling
theory was handicapped by a contingent historical circumstance. The
peculiarities of mathematical personality of the founders made lattice
theory less welcome to the mathematical public of the time than it
otherwise might have been. Thus Dedekind was wi- dely thought in his
time to be far too abstract for his own good, and some of his peers,
notably Kronecker, did not hesitate to state their loud and clear
disapproval. Later on, the tempers of Garrett Birkhoff and John von
Neumann clashed with those of some of the "mainstream"' mathematicians
of their time. Norman Levinson once related to me the following anecdote
about von Neumann. Invited to deliver the weekly mathematics colloquium
at Harvard sometime in the thirties, he chose the subject of his current
interest, namely, continuous geometries. At the end of the lecture, as
the public was streaming out, G. H. Hardy, who was at the time visiting
Cambridge, was overheard whispering to G. D. Birkhoff (Gar- rett's
father): "He is quite clearly a very brilliant man, but why does he
waste his time on this stuff?" I myself, when still an assistant
professor, was once stopped in the hall of M. I. T.