I tried reading Hilbert. Only his papers published in mathematical periodicals were available at the time. Anybody who has tried those knows they are very hard reading. |
I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and I was pressed by the math department to go on to graduate school. Actually they gave me fellowships that paid my way, otherwise I would not have been able to continue. |
I was generally interested in things of a fundamental nature. As an undergraduate I even published a minor paper about the Lorentz transformation, the foundation of (special) relativity theory. |
Never had any mathematical conversations with anybody, because there was nobody else in my field. |
The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions. |
Veblen was a great advocate of getting together informally. His teas were in the same spirit. He believed in taking long walks through the woods to discuss mathematical research. |