Gottingen, Friday, July 3

So in Gottingen we visited the old church, which is now a lecture hall, library and museum. There are replicas of approximately a zillion (more like 40 or 50) very old manuscripts, from a page from the Gutenburg Bible (Gottingen of course has one of four complete copies in existence), Psalters, etc., as well as portraits and busts of various people. We then went to Gauss's observatory, a building he occupied along with students for the latter part of his life (his first wife died, he married again, and evidently they didn't get along very well...). There is also the outline of the stone foundation of a small house built for him on the grounds of the observatory; it had no metal in it, so he could conduct experiments involving telegraphs and things without the metal in the building messing things up. I guess they didn't have insulation on wires, did they.

And then we went to the Gottingen Mathematics Institute; the building itself was built by the Rockefeller Foundation early in the 20th century. The library there contains a lot of books I am familiar with, in English, German, and other languages. Five by Andrew Ranicki, the usual by Walter Rudin of course. Olaf also asked if we could look at the Gottingen Suitcase, and we did, and I took a couple of photos. will tell that story another time.

We also visited the "Hilbert Space", the lecture room used by Hilbert, Felix Klein, and a few dozen others. There's a portrait of Hilbert at one end, and a portrait of Klein at the other. Aside from an extraordinary number of blackboards, it's otherwise a pretty ordinary lecture room. The German word for space is something like "roum", pronounced "room", and Hilbert lectured there, so it got to be called the Hilbert Space. Without belaboring the issue, a Hilbert Space is an important set of mathematical functions with certain properties. 'Nuf said.

Photos will follow; I even have them labeled, just am not having any luck inserting them here.

The rest of the weekend in Marburg was equally fun. We went to a market, climbed the hill to the chapel above the St. Elizabeth church, where they buried pilgrims who died in Marburg. They were having some sort of festival with variable music. Evelyn invited some people over for a fourth of July celebration dinner, complete with flag napkins (!), and fruit in red, white and blue (red and white currants, blueberries), as well as a strawberry salad. No fireworks; they are illegal.

On Sunday we drove up to the castle (the conventional wisdom was that Lillie wouldn't make it on foot...), had a picnic, and then visited the few rooms in the castle that are open to the public; a lot of it is used by the university, which was originally four monasteries. More photos. Someday.

On Monday Phil and Evelyn went to the university in the morning, and Olaf took Johannes to the doctor. He'd been crabby and a real pill and had a sore throat; turns out he has scarlet fever. Great.

So we took the train from Marburg to Tuebingen. Three trains, actually, but there were steps only at the beginning and the end. I'm writing this in a university guest house (read: small hotel room) that has rudimentary internet connectivity. Tomorrow we return to Couze, via four (!) trains. The middle two are TGV, though.

Cheers, Lillie