REFLECTIONS ON THE FORTY-YEAR CAREER OF A HUSBAND-AND-WIFE
TEAM OF MATHEMATICIANS
Luise-Charlotte Kappe
Department of Mathematical Sciences, SUNY at Binghamton
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
Abstract. This speech was given on May 18, 2002 at the dinner banquet of
the XXVI-th OSU-Denison Conference honoring Wolfgang Kappe on the occasion
of his retirement.
"It's a wonderful life" was the title of a talk I gave a month ago at the
MAA Seaway Section meeting. Its subtitle: reflections on the career of a
mathematician. This time my subtitle is: Reflections on the forty-year
career of a husband-and-wife team of mathematicians. Very appropriately so,
since we are celebrating our fortieth wedding anniversary in two weeks!
In my last talk I reflected first on potential and actual role models before
reflecting on my own career. Starting with Hypathia around 300 BC, it took me
fifty minutes to go through the centuries. Don't worry, this time it can be
done in fifteen minutes. There is just one role model who lived in the
generation of my parents, a husband-and-wife team of research mathematicians
who had each their own Ph.D. students and raised a family. I am talking
of Bernhard and Hanna Neumann. Bernhard is still alive today, soon celebrating
his ninety-third birthday. Hanna, born in 1914, died prematurely in 1971. Bernhard
had to emigrate from Germany in 1933. Hanna followed him five years later to
Great Britain. Their first years together were the turbulent times of World
War II. For a long time they held academic jobs but in different cities,
she in Hull, he in Manchester. In 1958 Hanna finally succeeded in joining
Bernhard in Manchester. During that time they raised a family of five
children. Finally, in 1963 they found jobs at the same university, the
National University of Australia in Canberra.
Compared to the Neumann's, we were lucky. We had always our jobs at the same
university and only had to pull up our stakes once going from Germany to the US,
by the way, the same year the Neumann's moved to Australia. But let's
start at the beginning:
"Once upon a time" Wolfgang and Liselotte met where all mathematicians meet,
that mythical place Oberwolfach. By the end of 1959 we both had gravitated to the
Black Forest area within a month of each other, Wolfgang as one of the
mathematicians in residence in Oberwolfach while writing his dissertation
with Reinhold Baer in Frankfurt, and me starting my dissertation with
Theodor Schneider in Freiburg.
I heard about Wolfgang for the first time when Schneider mentioned that Kappe
and Kegel, the two resident assistants in Oberwolfach, are named after two
geometric objects, namely the cap of a sphere and the cone. Wolfgang heard
about me for the first time from Erich Glock, my future brother-in-law
and also a mathematician in residence in Oberwolfach. Once coming back
from a visit in Freiburg, Erich reported that Theodor Schneider had brought
along "ein Fraeulein Menger". Wolfgang replied as any Berliner would have: "
Na und! (= so what!).
During my first year in Freiburg I came up to Oberwolfach a couple of times and
we met on those occasions. In Spring 1961 I was appointed to the newly created
position of a library assistant at Oberwolfach which I could take care of mainly
from Freiburg. But on occasion I had to visit the institute for a few days at a
time. Also, Theodor Schneider instructed me to help with the meetings while
Wolfgang was preparing for his Ph.D. exam. The latter one did not quite work out
as intended. In other words, we got to know each other during that time and my
presence became a pleasant obstacle in Wolfgang's endeavor to prepare for the
exam.
After a few delays however, Wolfgang defended his dissertation in July 1961
and by that time we were already in agreement that we should get married once
I finished my Ph.D. which happened in May 1962. We got married on June 1
of that year in Nuernberg.
Good that nature prevented us from reflecting on what marriage would do to our
careers. It was the single biggest mistake we could make, in particular, if we
wanted to stay in Germany. At that time each of us had good positions, Wolfgang
as a postdoc in Frankfurt and me as an assistant in Freiburg. I could have
kept it and commuted to Frankfurt. But we decided to live together. I moved
to Frankfurt and became a "Hilfsassistent".
Baer ran a tight ship in Frankfurt. International celebrities came through town
and gave talks and he wanted everyone to be there. Others occasionally would miss
such events and did not get noticed. If one or both of us were missing, Baer
always noticed and told us so at the next opportunity, because he could not
introduce us to the visitor as the husband-and-wife team and me in particular
as "Frau Dr. Dr. Kappe", one my own degree, the other my husband's, as is
customary in Germany. A few years later in Oberwolfach, Baer scheduled
talks back-to-back, first the Neumann's, then us.
Soon my husband's post doc would run out, and we started looking around for
places to go. Opportunities came up, for one of us there, for the other somewhere
else. We tried to stay optimistic, but Reinhold Baer knew better and gave us
the advice to go to the US. He reasoned that the climate for a husband-and-wife
team to succeed was better in the US. That was forty years ago and nothing
has changed in Germany since then in this respect. Baer introduced us to
Zassenhaus on the occasion of a visit to Oberwolfach. Zassenhaus just had
moved from Notre Dame to Ohio State. We got our immigration visa just
for the asking, got a plane ticket and landed in the US on September 16, 1963.
Fresh off the plane, we started teaching a few days later. All of you who came
here as graduate students at least had some idea how life would be as a college
teacher. For us it was all new, it was a culture shock. It was sink or swim
and we decided to swim. Thanks to the help of two people, Hans Zassenhaus who
introduced us to academic life in the States, and Arno Cronheim, a long-time
friend of Wolfgang, who introduced us to the daily life, we managed to swim.
Above all it was very essential that we lived through this together and
we were there for each other.
I could go on to report on the next 38 years of our marriage, but let me just
conclude as in the fairy tale: "... and they lived happily ever after".
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