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).
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).