Problems and Theorems in Analysis: Difference between revisions

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{{blockquote|It was a wonderful time; we worked with enthusiasm and concentration. We had similar backgrounds. We were both influenced, like all other young Hungarian mathematicians of that time, by [[Leopold Fejér]]. We were both readers of the same well directed Hungarian Mathematical Journal for high school students that stressed problem solving. We were interested in the same kind of questions, in the same topics; but one of us knew more about one topic and the other more about some other topic. It was a fine collaboration. The book ''Aufgaben und Lehrsatze aus der Analysis'', the result of our cooperation, is my best work and also the best work of Gábor Szegő.<ref name=SzegoCP>{{cite book |title=Collected Papers |volume=1 |last=Szego |first=Gabor |date=1982 |publisher=Birkhäuser |url=https://archive.org/details/collectedpapers0000szeg |url-access=registration }}</ref>{{rp|11}}}}

Writing ''Problems and Theorems'' was an intense experience for both young mathematicians. Pólya was a professor in [[ETH Zurich|Zurich]] and Szegő was a ''[[Privatdozent]]'' in [[Humboldt University of Berlin|Berlin]], so both had independent workloads. Pólya's wife worried he might have a nervous breakdown.<ref name=Walks/>{{rp|60}} Both were also under threat by the rise of antisemitism in Germany (both Pólya and Szegő were Hungarian Jews). Financial difficulties, on top of pessimism about appointment to a German university, convinced Pólya to move to England in 1925.<ref name=Walks/>{{rp|61–63}}<ref name=SzegoCP/>{{rp|23}} Szegő took longer to flee, not leaving Germany until 1934 when Pólya and [[Harald Bohr]] convinced him to accept a post at [[Washington University]]. By this time the Nazis had already begun purging Jewish professors from German universities.<ref name=SzegoMT>{{MacTutor |id=Szego |title=Gábor Szegő |date=July 2014 }}</ref> Szegő and Pólya (who collaborated on little after the problem book) were reunited in America in the 1950s, in the mathematics department of [[Stanford University]].<ref name=Walks/>{{rp|62}}

==Contents==