German scholars, against odds now not only forgotten but also hard to
imagine, were striving to revivify the life of the mind which the mental
and physical barbarity preached and practised by the -isms and -acies of
1933-1946 had all but eradicated. Thinking that among the disciples of
these elders, restorers rather than progressives, I might find a student
or two who would wish to master new mathematics but grasp it and use it
with the wholeness of earlier times, in 1952 I wrote to Mr. HAMEL, one
of the few then remaining mathematicians from the classical mould, to
ask him to name some young men fit to study for the doc- torate in The
Graduate Institute for Applied Mathematics at Indiana University,
flourishing at that time though soon to be destroyed by the jealous
ambition of the local, stereotyped pure. Having just retired from the
Technische Universitat in Charlottenburg, he passed my inquiry on to Mr.
SZABO, in whose institute there NOLL was then an assistant. Although Mr.