There has been some recent lively discussion of ethical issues in hiring here.
Now what would you say of someone who, while Rektor of his provincial university in the town of G., visits a more prestigious foreign institution (no less than an Imperial one, in B.), accepts an offer to move there, does not mention it to anyone, twiddles and twaddles, and then reneges on the offer after he was supposed to have started teaching? Shocking, what?
I couldn’t help smiling when reading this synopsis of the employment history of L. Boltzmann, though the actual facts must have been quite distressing to the people involved (Boltzmann apparently once said that he knew much better “how to integrate than how to intrigue” — I’d like to see the original German, of course, but there was no reference in the book I’m reading). He was in Graz for 14 years, got an offer from Berlin in 1888, accepted, reneged (and had to be relieved of his duties by the Kaiser — though I don’t know which one; there were three in 1888, apparently)… and instead of staying in Graz as one might have expected after turning down one of the juiciest positions available at the time, he went on a true whirlwind of moves and changes during the following years (first to Münich, then to Vienna, then to Leipzig, then back to Vienna…)

I wish to thank the 50 individuals (or institutions) who bought a copy of my book on the large sieve last year! I’ll be happy to offer a beer (or any other drink) to any one of you who happens to spend some time in Zürich — even if this was an impulse buy due to its brush with literary celebrity, or a wish to see how the contents stacked up against such competition as Baboon Metaphysics.

Note: no need to bring a receipt to get the drink; I’m a trusting person. (Though there will be an interesting pigeon-hole problem once I’ve paid for 60 or 70 drinks…)

Irrelevant note: the happy few is a reference en anglais dans le texte to the quotation at the end of Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme (one of my favorite French novels); I’ve just done my second Wikipedia edit by removing the claim that he used it for Le rouge et le noir (in the English entry).

Richard Dedekind, 1858:

Die Betrachtungen, welche den Gegenstand dieser kleinen Schrift bilden, stammen aus dem Herbst des Jahres 1858. Ich befand mich damals als Professor am eidgenössischen Polytechnicum zu Zürich zum ersten Male in der Lage, die Elemente der Differentialrechnung vortragen zu müssen, und fühlte dabei empfindlicher als jemals frührer den Mangel einer wirklich wissenschaftlichen Begründung der Arithmetik

(in Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen, where Dedekind cuts are introduced); translation by W.W. Beman:

My attention was first directed toward the considerations which form the subject of this pamphlet in the autumn of 1858. As professor in the Polytechnic School in Zürich I found myself for the first time obliged to lecture upon the elements of the differential calculus and felt more keenly than ever before the lack of a really scientific foundation for arithmetic.

I’ve just spent a week (minus one day for the Diplomfeier of the mathematics and physics department of ETH) in Vienna, where the Erwin Schrödinger Institute was holding a May Spring(ish) Summer School on Number Theory. I gave four lectures on sieve methods and recent related results, and found the occasion highly enjoyable. Due to the excellence of the blackboards, I only used chalk, however, so I cannot give links to slides for these lectures. Here is a picture of one of the blackboards available for discussions:

I filmed it, and it took me 24 seconds to walk from one end to the other, which probably beats the previous record (the main lecture hall of the ICTP in Trieste) by as much as 10 seconds.

However, one possibly negative point is that there were no cats to be seen within the confines of the Institute. Of course, they may all be living in boxes hidden from visitors, in various entangled states…

The weather in Vienna was not as good as it could have been, but it still allowed me to get a glimpse of the surrounding history. The E.S.I is located on Boltzmanngasse, and there is a “Kurt Gödel Research Center” very close by. Walking randomly, I also found this plaque:

(Note: this picture is interesting — to me — because of S. Zweig, not because of Hegner, who is not Kurt).

Readers who are keen on diophantine geometry might be interested in adding to their reading list the new blog of the Vieux Girondin…