Stanisław Ulam – Magician of Mathematics
A brilliant mathematician. He wrote many of the pages comprising the Scottish Book – a notebook containing mathematical puzzles put forward by members of the Lviv School of Mathematics – but was still amazed by the fact that ‘a few signs which were written on a board or a sheet of paper can change the course of human history’. His ‘scribblings’ for the Manhattan project influence the world to this day.
Mathematicians in a café
Stanisław Ulam comes from an assimilated Jewish family from Lviv. When he is five, World War I breaks out. His family moves from one place to another because his father serves in the Austrian army. Stanisław goes to school in an independent Poland.
After his final matura school exams, he is certain that he wants to become a mathematician. However, his parents want him to study something more practical. They fear that a boy of Jewish descent will not make a scientific career. The father had already lost hope that Stanisław would become a lawyer and take over his law office.
Stanisław Ulam, photo: CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Engineering studies at the Lviv Technical School is a compromise. As a student with exceptional mathematical skill, Stanisław is immediately noticed by the lecturers. After a few successes, with their recommendation, he switches to his beloved major.
From the very beginning, Ulam stands out due to his self-confidence (sometimes even audacity!), optimism and sense of humour. Even his way of solving mathematical problems suits his character: he reasons unconventionally, innovates and is full of ideas.
As a student, he ends up in the famous Scottish Café. It is the place where the most famous professors meet over coffee and sometimes a tipple to solve complicated problems. Ulam sits at the table of Stefan Banach: one of the cornerstones of the Lviv School of Mathematics.
However, he is still a student. He hates exams and cannot mobilise himself to write his master’s thesis. When he finally has to do it, he writes it… in a single night. One year later he defends his PhD. He is 24 years old.
Unfortunately, his parents’ fears turn out to be valid: an academic career in Poland is not wide open to Ulam. The young scientist decides to try his luck abroad.
Through Vienna, Zurich and Paris, he ends up in Cambridge. During a year, he makes acquaintances and gathers experience, but his chances for a position in Lviv are still meagre. Besides, in the 1930s, the vibe surrounding the Jewish community in Europe is becoming more ominous by the day.
In the end, the young mathematician gets lucky. He receives an invitation to Princeton from Professor John von Neumann.
A scientist’s ‘American Dream’
Stanisław Ulam, 1945, photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory/PAP
In late 1935, Ulam boards the transatlantic steamer. His stipend does not amount to much, but what a chance this is! At the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study, the Pole meets, for example, Albert Einstein.
Soon, at Harvard, he receives a generous bursary for the most prominent young researchers. However, until the outbreak of the war, he spends every summer at his hometown and maintains contact with the mathematicians of Lviv.
After the holidays of August 1939, he returns to the United States with his younger brother. The war breaks out when they are in New York.
At that time, more and more scientists from Europe come to American universities. Ulam has difficulties with finding a good job. Finally, he is employed at a less-prestigious West Coast university.
He feels more and more at home in the United States. He marries a Frenchwoman he meets in Cambridge, Françoise Aron, and applies for American citizenship.
Now he wants to take part in the war. He volunteers for the US Aerial Force but, because of his visual impairment, he has no chances to get enrolled. Ulam writes to von Neumann: he has a suspicion that his fellow scientist works for the military.
The Polish mathematician is invited to work on a mysterious project. He agrees and, in 1943, he moves to the vicinity of Santa Fe in New Mexico.
The Los Alamos bomb
At a secret Los Alamos site scientists have, for a few months already, been working on the construction of the atomic bomb. It is a government project codenamed ‘Manhattan’, started under the orders of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The scientists are in a race against the clock: actually, the Germans.
At the site, Ulam encounters fellow physicists and mathematicians which, lately, have been disappearing without a word. Nobody uses their real names here: they all use pseudonyms. And work all day to develop the atomic weapon.
Because of Los Alamos’ isolation and the fact that the scientists spend most of their time together, a peculiar community of researchers emerges. It reminds Ulam of the café meetings in Lviv. He likes it a lot because he still cannot get used to the highly organised academic system in the States.
In July 1945, a test blast is carried out and succeeds. In August, two bombs fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years after the event, the Polish scientist confesses:
When I learnt about Hiroshima and I saw the photos of the destruction, I was surprised at first. Suddenly, in my brain, a peculiar mental leap emerged: digits written with white chalk on a blackboard and, immediately after that, a city which is blown off the face of the planet.
The war ends but, soon after that, Ulam receives an offer to return to Los Alamos: he will remain there for the next two decades. The project will be resumed: this time the USSR is the threat. Ulam directly contributes to the construction of thermonuclear weapons.
Today, the design of the bomb is known as the Teller-Ulam configuration: it is named after the Polish mathematician and Hungarian physicist Edward Teller. The test blast was carried out on 1st November 1952.
Ulam believes that performing computations cannot be immoral: contrary to using the results.
Originally written in Polish by Karolina Dzimira-Zarzycka, translated to English by Patryk Grabowski, Dec 2018
Stanisław Ulam
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