Mathematican Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) standing with physicist Max Born (1882-1970) at the University of Göttingen in 1925. Wiener spent time in Göttingen as a postdoc in 1914 and later returned in 1924-26 as a Guggenheim scholar. The prodigy’s latter stay occurred concurrently with the birth of quantum mechanics (by Heisenberg and Born in 1925) and his stay overlapped those of both J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) and John von Neumann (1903-57).

Related Privatdozent newsletters:

• The Absent-Minded Father of Cybernetics, Aug 22nd 2021

• The Mathematical Center of the Universe, Aug 8th 2021

• When Wiener met Einstein (1925), Apr 20th 2021

• On Norbert Wiener's Relationship with Bertrand Russell, Mar 22nd 2021

• The Golden Age of Quantum Physics (1927), Sep 3rd 2021

This is the first edition of Photo Edition — a shorter, more frequent newsletter for subscribers of Privatdozent. If you don’t want to receive these emails, go to your Substack profile and uncheck the box titled ‘Photo Edition’.

Disclosure: The photograph has been edited and colourized for effect. Send inquiries about unwanted use/copyright claims to privatdozent @ protonmail.com.