Abstract
THE retirement has been announced of Prof. S. Brodetsky, professor of applied mathematics and head of the Department of Mathematics in the University of Leeds., It must be but rarely that the career of any distinguished scientific man borders on the romantic, but the career of Prof. Selig Brodetsky certainly furnishes one of these rare cases. He was born sixty years ago of orthodox Jewish parents at Olviopol, a village in Russia near Odessa. The prevalence of pogroms against the Jews in the Russia of those days decided the father to seek an asylum for himself and his family in England. He left Russia by himself first of all, and after he had established a means of livelihood in London, he sent for his wife and four children to join him. It was an adventurous journey across Europe for a young woman with four young children, and Brodetsky has frequently told how, as a child of four years of age, he clung to his mother‘s hand while crossing a frontier, while she pushed a corner of her shawl into the mouth of his little sister in arms to prevent her crying and so attracting the attention of the frontier guards. The number in the family increased steadily in London and the res augusta domi was never far absent from their home. But Brodetsky‘s father was a man mighty in the Scriptures and particularly well-versed in the Talmudic writings, so that young Selig was reared in a home pervaded with traditional Jewish culture and an intellectual outlook although in a restricted field. The result was that several of the children overcame all obstacles and entered universities.
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Mathematics at Leeds : Prof. S. Brodetsky. Nature 161, 467 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161467a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161467a0