Early Life and Education
Witold Hurewicz was born to a Jewish family in Łódź, Russian Empire (now Poland).
His father was an industrialist. Hurewicz attended school in a Russian controlled Poland but with World War I beginning before he had begun secondary school, major changes occurred in Poland. In August 1915 the Russian forces which had held Poland for many years withdrew. Germany and Austria-Hungary took control of most of the country and the University of Warsaw was refounded and it began operating as a Polish university. Rapidly, a strong school of mathematics grew up in the University of Warsaw, with topology one of the main topics. Although Hurewicz knew intimately the topology that was being studied in Poland he chose to go to Vienna to continue his studies.
He studied under Hans Hahn and Karl Menger in Vienna, receiving a Ph.D. in 1926. Hurewicz was awarded a Rockefeller scholarship which allowed him to spend the year 1927-28 in Amsterdam. He was assistant to Brouwer in Amsterdam from 1928 to 1936. He was given study leave for a year which he decided to spend in the United States. He visited the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and then decided to remain in the United States and not return to his position in Amsterdam.
Read more about this topic: Witold Hurewicz
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)