At the age of fourteen, Jan Liseiwicz accompanied his parents to a party to celebrate a wedding in another local aristocratic family; also present on this occasion were the family of Michael Steinroder, at that time one of the most famous mathematicians in the world. At the time of this unexpected meeting, Michael Steinroder was the Director of the Institute of Mathematics at Cambridge University and a chess grandmaster. Mr Liseiwicz senior explained to the mathematician that he hoped that one day his son would be able to study at Cambridge University. Steinroder said arrogantly, ‘There are two ways to gratify that ambition. Either he has to pass the standard entrance examinations held every year for Cambridge University or he has to win the Newtonian Prize in Mathematics or Physics offered every two years by the Royal Society.’ (The prize was awarded in mathematics in oddnumbered years and for physics in even-numbered years. The first five highly commended individuals could attend Cambridge University without having to pass the entrance examinations and for free.)
The young Jan Liseiwicz then piped up: ‘I have heard that you are regarded as the world’s finest amateur chess player. How about we play a game? If I win, surely I should be allowed to attend the university without having to take the entrance examinations?’
Steinroder replied sternly, ‘I am happy to play a game with you, but let me make it clear — you have demanded a great favour from me if you win. I am happy to oblige, but in return I am going to ask something of you if you lose. In this way the game will be fair. If you do not agree, then I decline to play.’
‘Tell me what you want me to do,’ Jan responded.
‘If you lose,’ the mathematician said, ‘you can never apply to attend Cambridge University.’
He was hoping to scare Jan off, but the only person who got frightened was the boy’s father. A storm of protest from Mr Liseiwicz senior made his son somewhat hesitant, but in the end he said confidently, ‘Fine!’
Surrounded by onlookers, the pair of them began to move their chess pieces, but within less than half an hour, Steinroder got up from the table and said with a laugh to Mr Liseiwicz: ‘Bring your son to Cambridge next year.’
Mr Liseiwicz said, ‘You haven’t finished the game yet.’
The mathematician said, ‘Do you really think I can’t tell when I am beaten?’ Turning back, he asked young Jan: ‘Do you think you can beat me?’
The boy replied, ‘Right now I only have a thirty per cent chance of victory; you have a seventy per cent chance.’
The mathematician said, ‘You are absolutely right. On the other hand, because you have realized that, there is at least a sixty to seventy per cent chance that you could force me to make a mistake. You have done very well and I hope to play many more games of chess with you when you come to Cambridge.’
Ten years later, Jan Liseiwicz (then aged just twenty-four) was listed by the Austrian journal Monatshefte für Mathematik as one of the rising stars in the world of mathematics. The following year he won the highest prize offered in international mathematics: the Fields Medal. People call this the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, but in fact it is much harder to achieve, for the Nobel Prize is offered every single year while the Fields Medal is only awarded once every four years.
One of Liseiwicz’s fellow students at Cambridge was a young woman who belonged to one of the junior branches of the Austrian imperial family. She fell madly in love with this young winner of the Fields Medal, but he remained completely indifferent to her. One day, the young woman’s father came to see Liseiwicz — naturally this was not in the hope that he would marry his daughter, but because he wanted to discuss his ideas for improving the state of mathematical knowledge in Austria. He asked the young man if he was prepared to help him achieve this ambition. Liseiwicz asked him what exactly he had in mind, and he said, ‘I will put up the money. You find suitable people. We ought to be able to put together a nice research institute.’
‘How much money are you prepared to invest in this?’ Liseiwicz asked.
‘Tell me how much you need.’
Liseiwicz thought about it for two weeks and worked out a mathematical formula for calculating the benefits to his own future career and for the field as a whole. The result was that going to Austria won over staying in Cambridge, no matter what number he looked at.
So he went to Austria.
A lot of people thought that he went to Austria at the behest of two people — one was the rich father and the other the besotted daughter. Some people imagined that this lucky young man would marry the girl and massively advance his career at one fell swoop. However, in practice the only thing that happened was that he advanced his career. He used the Hapsburg prince’s inexhaustible resources to create the finest mathematical research institute in Austria and gathered many excellent mathematicians under his banner — eventually the young woman who had been so desperate to marry him found a replacement from among their number. There was much gossip at the time that he was homosexual, and some of his actions did indeed seem to give credence to the rumours: for example, he never employed a woman in his research institute — even the secretaries and support staff were all male. Furthermore, when newspapers required an interview with him, they quickly learned to send a male reporter. As a matter of fact, more women reporters went to interview him than men, but they came back empty-handed; although this was probably more the result of his secretive nature than anything else.[Transcript of the interview with Master Rong]
Jan Liseiwicz came to N University as a visiting scholar in the spring of 1938 — I imagine that he was headhunting. Of course, he was not expecting that such earth-shattering events would occur over the next couple of weeks. When he heard that Hitler had invaded Austria, he had no choice but to stay on at N University, at least until the situation in Europe became clearer. While he was waiting, he received a letter from a friend in the United States, informing him that the situation in Europe was truly appalling. The Nazi flag was already on the march through Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, and Jewish people were being forced to flee. Those who did not leave in time were being rounded up and placed in camps. It was then that he realized that there was now nowhere to go and that he was stuck with us for the foreseeable future. He took up the position of professor of mathematics here, but he was still waiting for an opportunity to get to America. It was during this time that his personality (or perhaps it was his body) underwent a mysterious and unexpected change — almost overnight he began to experience an overwhelming attraction to the young women at the university. This was apparently something that had never happened to him before. He seemed like a strange tree that puts out different flowers when it is planted in different places, which then mature into different kinds of fruit. His decision to go to the United States was swamped by this new interest in the opposite sex, and two years later he married a young instructor from the physics department — he was forty years old at the time and she was a good fourteen years younger. This delayed his plan of going to the United States yet again, and he did not come back to the idea for another decade.