An American Mathematician with a Czech Name: Václav Hlavatý (1894-1969)
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
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| Description | n the interwar period, the Czechoslovak Václav Hlavatý belonged to the wide-ranging community of differential geometers. After World War II, Hlavatý, like many other mathematicians, attempted to continue in his work in the new situation. While it is commonly assumed that mathematicians in the Soviet bloc were not directly affected by the materialist worldview, this was not the case with Václav Hlavatý. After he had emigrated to the US in 1948 (Indiana University, Bloomington), he became deeply involved in exile politics, and politics at large also affected his work: he was involved in military grants in the US; his pre-war library had to stay back in Prague and he could not have it sent over; the third volume of his Projective geometry was never published, although it was ready to be printed; and last, but not least, he was ignored by his fellow countrymen. In my talk, I will look at the background behind Hlavatý’s decisions, thus showing the complexity of the life of a mathematician working under Cold War conditions, with the emphasis on the choice of research topic. |
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