Without revealing my grounds (except that I’ve known many mathematicians), I would bet at even odds that your high-school math teacher grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Am I right?
You are very right. I am from Hungary. The Iron curtain fell exactly the year when my GEB story took place. The guy was a promising young mathematician before becoming a high-school teacher of gifted students at the famous Fazekas high school. Although he was never bitter about it at all, I suspect this change of course was somehow related to the fact that he was a sympathizer of the underground democratic opposition.
Excellent- I’d actually assumed you had grown up in the English-speaking world and that you just happened to have an Eastern European teacher for some reason, even though that’s a much less likely way for it to happen. Still, it’s nice to see I can trust my instincts about the national character of particular mathematical eccentricities- something about the style of the example reminded me strongly of Erdős (except for the personal irony it would have had for him).
Without revealing my grounds (except that I’ve known many mathematicians), I would bet at even odds that your high-school math teacher grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Am I right?
You are very right. I am from Hungary. The Iron curtain fell exactly the year when my GEB story took place. The guy was a promising young mathematician before becoming a high-school teacher of gifted students at the famous Fazekas high school. Although he was never bitter about it at all, I suspect this change of course was somehow related to the fact that he was a sympathizer of the underground democratic opposition.
Excellent- I’d actually assumed you had grown up in the English-speaking world and that you just happened to have an Eastern European teacher for some reason, even though that’s a much less likely way for it to happen. Still, it’s nice to see I can trust my instincts about the national character of particular mathematical eccentricities- something about the style of the example reminded me strongly of Erdős (except for the personal irony it would have had for him).