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“THE FORSAKEN MERMAN,” written by Matthew Arnold in 1849, was one of my mother’s favorite poems. Arnold wrote it as a reaction to the Hans Andersen story, “The Little Mermaid,” which was published in 1837 and later made even more famous by Walt Disney. Andersen wrote a wonderfully sentimental tale of the girl who abandons her home in the sea to live with her prince on land. Arnold is telling the same story from the point of view of the husband and children that she abandoned.
Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar,
Singing, here came a mortal,
But faithless was she,
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.
It is a long poem, with the refrain “Children dear, was it yesterday?” repeated at the beginning of each verse. My mother knew it by heart and used to recite it to my sister Alice and me when we were little and she put us to bed. It is not a great poem, but it was exactly appropriate to my situation in February 1957, when my wife Verena walked out of our home and abandoned her husband and children. In the New Year letter one month earlier, there is no hint of impending drama.
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1957
I shall be five weeks away from home before the Columbia term begins. First a spell with General Atomic at La Jolla, then at Los Alamos, and finally ten days at Aspen, Colorado. For the last ten days Verena will fly out to meet me, and we shall take a real holiday together.
We had Hans Haefeli to stay over Christmas, and he as usual made up for the aunts and uncles and godfathers which we lack in this new country. A fine and faithful friend he is to all of us.
At the moment my main reading matter is the history of the Americans in Petrograd in 1917–18 by George Kennan [1965], who occupies the next office to mine at the institute. This book is delightful reading, it is history written according to the maxim Le Bon Dieu aime bien les Détails. I am reading volume one while Kennan is getting volume two ready for printing.
Kennan became an institute professor in 1956. His two-volume work was published with the title Soviet-American Relations 1917–1920. He remained a friend and colleague until his death at age 101 in 2005. My most vivid memory of Kennan when he came to the institute is his story of the Trotsky papers. In the State Department archive in Washington, he discovered an old shoebox containing a hundred handwritten documents. Before Kennan found them, nobody knew that they existed. They were the first official communications from the newborn Soviet government to the American diplomats in Petrograd. They were written personally by Leon Trotsky. To discover such a treasure is the mark of a first-rate historian. Kennan and I became friends because we were both passionately engaged in the problems of war and peace and nuclear weaponry. He knew more about history, and I knew more about weapons, so we both had something to learn.
JANUARY 31, 1957, ASPEN, COLORADO
Now I have a peaceful hour to write you our news before going to bed. Such a beautiful day it was. In the morning brilliant sunshine, dark blue sky, virgin white snow, equally perfect for skiing or for gazing. Verena and I both went up to the top of the mountain and skied down the four-thousand-foot run to the bottom. Verena has made remarkable progress with skiing in only six days here, never having done it before. She has a natural balance and suppleness, and I hope she will have a chance to do much more in the future. We were here just a week, and we go home the day after tomorrow. It was the best, the most complete, the most triumphant holiday I have ever had. Pain and joy, love and bewilderment and laughter, all on top of each other. And in the end, tears and confusion are past, and there remains a shared courage, an understanding, and a lightness of spirit. Now let me explain briefly what has happened. An old friend of mine from Cambridge days has been at the institute for the last year and a half. While I was away in La Jolla and Los Alamos, he and Verena have fallen in love and decided to run away together. Verena came to Aspen to tell me this, and to make a harmonious and dignified end to our marriage.
Georg Kreisel had become one of the leading experts on mathematical logic during the ten years since I had known him as a student in Cambridge. In 1955 he applied for a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study to work with Kurt Gödel. I wrote an enthusiastic letter of recommendation for him, and he was accepted. We remained friends during his stay at the institute until the end of 1956. The drama that followed came as a total surprise. In my letters I did not mention his name until the affair became public.
The practical arrangements are simple. I shall keep the children. We have the competent Imme Jung who will take care of them for the time being. Verena will be in Princeton till about April and will be with us to see the new household running smoothly. Verena will not marry this fellow but will eventually find herself a job somewhere and live in the independence which she has always wanted. I will obtain a divorce as soon as possible, and I will not under any circumstances ask her to come back to me as a wife. I hope she will come back frequently as a friend and as a mother. Later I will write in more detail about our plans for the future.
Just now I want only to make some general remarks about the past. First, about myself. Please do not offer me your sympathy or your pity. I have been happy in this marriage, and I have no regrets now it is over. It has enriched my life in many ways, and this enrichment is permanent. Second, about Verena. You can blame her for what she has done. But I do not. I consider that she has fulfilled her obligation to me, by bearing me two fine children, by caring for all of us through the difficult years when the babies were small and money was short, and by loving me faithfully for seven years. She leaves me now just when our family life is getting to be easy and comfortable, the children soon to be all at school, the finances ample, and a beautiful house to live in. What she has done may be crazy, but it is not irresponsible. I believe that she has earned her freedom, that she is doing the right thing in following her own star wherever it leads. I want you to give her your respect if not your approval. As Blake [1799] says in these lines which I have long known but never rightly understood till now,
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun-rise.
FEBRUARY 7, 1957
Today I gave my first lecture at Columbia. This is very good fun. I am going up to New York four days a week, and I have a class of twenty-five students who seem interested and intelligent. It is good for me to get back to teaching, and I find even the train rides in the morning and evening peaceful and refreshing. I leave each morning at eight-thirty and return at six-thirty, like a regular bank clerk. Did you hear in your newspapers about the exciting things that have happened this month at Columbia? This makes it especially worthwhile to be at Columbia just now. As a result of a suggestion made last summer by my friend Frank Yang (of the institute) and another young Chinese called Tsung-Dao Lee (of Columbia), the people at Columbia undertook two novel and clever experiments. The leader of the experimental work was a third Chinese called Chien Shiung Wu who is also exceedingly good. The idea of the experiments is to test the possibility that a spinning particle may carry a definite distinction between its North and South Poles. That is to say, suppose you have a particle spinning in a definite sense (say clockwise) around a north-south axis, and the particle emits an electron, is it possible that the electron will come out with different probability along the north and the south directions? All the theories of the last thirty years assumed that this was impossible. Until Yang and Lee, everybody thought that so obvious that it did not need to be tested. Now the Wu experiment shows an enormous difference between North and South, so big that it could not have been missed by anybody who had looked for it. This is an important breakthrough, and we are all happy about it. Yang and Lee deserve this triumph, as they have been working and thinking about these problems harder than anybody else for the last two years. We have now the job of changing our theories to agree with the new information, and this is likely to lead to substantial progress. It is fine for me to be at Columbia where the experiments are being done, and to have lunch with Lee and Wu and the others whenever I feel like it.
The more I see of Imme, the more impressed I am with her firm and solid character. Without this, of course, any kind of peaceful changeover would have been impossible. Imme is twenty years old and comes from Berlin, so she is used to a life of unpredictable ups and downs. I hope she will be happy with us and will stay her two years.
Imme Jung came to our home as an au pair to help care for the children. Verena had met with her in Austria in summer 1956 and offered her the job. Imme obtained a visa that allowed her to work in America for two years before returning to Germany. When she arrived in New York, Kreisel came with Verena to meet her at the boat. Imme assumed that this gentleman who came to the boat was Freeman Dyson. I did not meet her until I returned home from Aspen in February 1957, two weeks after her arrival in America. When she arrived, she had no warning that she was walking into a family crisis.
SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 11, 1957
Just came home from singing the St. John Passion of Bach. What a wonderful work it is! Such a joy it was to sing for three hours and forget all problems and worries.
After I came home I went to sit on Katrin’s bed for a while, and she had a good cry. Do you remember how as children Alice and I used to love to listen to you reading “The Forsaken Merman”? I have forgotten everything except the refrain “Children dear, was it yesterday?” Yesterday in fact it was, when Verena moved out. Today she came back for the afternoon while Imme had her free time, and she gave the children their supper while I was at the singing. But she is now definitely and officially moved out. On the whole we have come through this crisis very well. Yesterday was the worst day because we had to tell the children. It is worst for Katrin, but all three of them have been brave and cheerful. This makes it easy for me to be brave and cheerful too.
The Oppenheimers gave a big party last night, and Verena and I went to it as our last public appearance together. I shall always be sorry we did not put on as good a show for our wedding as we did for our separation. During the party I took the opportunity to speak to Oppenheimer and told him it was good-bye for us. This was the first time we told anybody here outside the family. Afterwards when we were leaving, Mrs. Oppenheimer came with us to the door and kissed Verena, and tears were streaming down her face. Before I had always found Mrs. Oppenheimer tiresome, but I am grateful to her for those tears. After the party we went our separate ways home.
FEBRUARY 14, 1957
I feel like a man who has been condemned to death and led before the firing squad, has heard the order to fire and the report of the guns, and then discovered that all the cartridges were blanks and that he is still alive and well. He walks away from the scene of execution with a light heart, the earth is still beautiful, and the problems of life can never seem so frightening again. So much for myself. You are right, it is the children who suffer most in this business. But one thing you must remember, in our family the children always knew that Verena had walked out of her previous marriage. So this was accepted by them as an event in the normal run of events, of course not a desirable event, but still not unprecedented and not upsetting completely their feelings of stability. I think this was important in making it easier for them to accept what has happened.
If you would see Esthi and George now as I see them every evening when I come home from my day in New York, you would not believe they had a care in the world. They are their usual noisy lively selves, shouting and squabbling and telling stories without beginning and without end. The only change in their behavior is that they are a little more affectionate to me and give me some of the goodnight hugs and kisses that used to be reserved for Verena. I never had any choice about what to do, nor any difficult decision to make. All I had to do was to take what came, and be brave and cheerful, for the sake of the children. With the children around to help, this was never difficult.
FEBRUARY 18, 1957
For heaven’s sake don’t think of our story as a tragedy. I much prefer the attitude of Mila Gibbons, the dancing teacher who is now taking care of Katrin. I went and had a long talk, both with Katrin and afterwards with Mila, on Saturday night. Mila told me how it happened that she invited Katrin to stay. Katrin came to her class on Monday a week ago in tears. Mila’s daughter Eve found out what was the matter and went to tell Mila. “Oh, only that,” said Mila. “I thought it was a death in the family, or a dog run over by a car.”
Mila and I see very much eye to eye about the situation as it concerns Katrin, and I will not be surprised if Katrin stays with her for some months. Mila herself ran away from her husband many years ago and has brought up her two children single-handed.
On my train rides from New York in the evenings I have been reading Ibsen’s Doll’s House [1879], which I had not read for many years. It is a grand story, and I think it explains why the word betrayal is quite wrong to describe what happened with me and Verena. What makes our situation different from the usual one is that the roles of Torvald and Nora are somehow mixed up, so that at the critical scene in the third act she is Torvald and I am Nora.
Like thousands of other frustrated housewives before and since, Verena saw Ibsen’s Nora as a role model for herself. Nora was the first heroine in world literature who had the courage to abandon her husband and children and escape from the doll’s house in which she was imprisoned.
MARCH 5, 1957,
BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LAB, LONG ISLAND
One of the many selfish advantages I have from kicking Verena out of the house is that now Esthi and George come to my bed each morning for half an hour before we get up. They come into my bed very quietly, one on each side, and either go to sleep there or start talking about all kinds of things. George now is passing through the first theological-philosophical stage. Yesterday he surprised me by saying, “You know there are two Gods.” I said, “What are their names?” He said “One is called Jesus and he makes people, and the other one is called Bacchus and he makes wine.”
Verena found herself a job. I am happy and relieved about this. On Monday she went down to Philadelphia to be interviewed by the Remington Rand company, a big firm manufacturing and designing electronic computers for all kinds of mathematical applications. The same evening came a telegram with a firm offer of a job, at nine-tenths of the salary on which I was supporting the entire family during our years at Cornell. I do not know whether she will take this job, it is not exactly her cup of tea. But with this telegram in her pocket she can feel safe in bargaining for good conditions with any other outfit she chooses to work for. I am relieved to find she is in demand and can take care of herself. How can it be that I was so happy for seven years to be married to Verena, and now I am so happy not to be married to her?
Thursday morning. Verena said yes to Remington Rand and will start work in Philadelphia on Monday.
MARCH 12, 1957
On Sunday I took Imme with me to sing Haydn’s Theresienmesse. This was a great success. Imme loves music and had sung this work before, so she had no difficulties. I was happy to find something she can do with me, so that I can introduce her to people.
MARCH 27, 1957
You ask about Verena’s work and about her new boyfriend. Both seem to be working out well. Her boyfriend is still in Princeton and still preserving a careful anonymity. Verena is determined to keep his existence a secret. I think this is foolish, but I am respecting her wishes in this matter, and I am glad you are doing the same. The desire for secrecy originates not with her but with him. I felt from the beginning this was a mistake. If he wanted to make her happy, he should have taken her off with a flourish of trumpets to Casablanca or some such place completely away from the children. But he wanted to have her love without the inconvenience and responsibility of acknowledging her publicly. So she has to suffer the misery of being separated from the children and still within reach. For this I despise him and consider him unworthy of her. I do not know how things are with them now, nor do I care. She is still living with him and will continue to do so for some time, but I think it is rather a question of faute de mieux. He will go back to England in August, and she intends to move to Switzerland sometime later in the year. After that they can see as much or as little of each other as they please.
Now you can see how suddenly struck I was when I read the last act of A Doll’s House. Nora is sitting impatiently waiting for the “wonderful thing” to happen, that Torvald should take the blame for her forgery of her father’s name. For me, the “wonderful thing” was that Verena should be carried away to Casablanca in a cloud of romance and glory. Then the dénouement comes when the wonderful thing does not happen, and Nora finds out she has been worshipping a tin god for ten years. Then she says good-bye and walks out. And that is exactly what happened to me. Only I took the house and kids along too. You must not think, because I make jokes about Verena now, that I am not grateful to her for all the fine things she did. It is just a relief not to keep up this solemn pretence of infallibility anymore.
APRIL 2, 1957
The night after George’s fourth birthday party was the institute spring dance. This is a great event which happens once a year, and everybody dresses up in black ties and evening dresses. I asked Imme to come as my partner, and she got a university student to baby-sit for us so we could dance through the night. It happened that this year it was Oppenheimer’s idea to have a dinner party of the institute professors and their wives before the dance, and Kitty Oppenheimer insisted that Imme should come to the dinner too. So Esther and I went into town to buy her a gardenia for her dress, and at seven-thirty Imme and I solemnly entered that majestic dining room with Van Gogh originals around the walls, to sit among the distinguished company of the learned. I felt like Higgins taking his Eliza to the ball; after all, Imme is extremely young and has little formal education. But she carried it off perfectly and seemed quite at her ease with everybody. Oppy especially went out of his way to be friendly to her.
Kitty Oppenheimer was not trying to be a matchmaker. She had already visited Imme at our home to welcome her to the institute community. She had the good sense to see that Imme was alone with my children in a strange country and needed some grown-up friends. The dinner party was a great opportunity for Imme to get to know some of the famous institute people.
After the dinner we went down to the institute where the dance was beginning. Very soon the whole mob arrived, about three hundred people, and there was a good band and lots of young people enjoying themselves. We danced from ten till four with an interval for supper at midnight, and neither of us seemed to get tired in the least. Imme had her fair share of attention from the other gentlemen who are friends of ours. She is light and graceful and could make a good dancer. I think I never in my life enjoyed a dance so light-heartedly as this one. Only one thing she said: “I wish there were some way to make all these people understand that I am your maid and not your mistress.” This is a real problem, and I see no solution to it.
EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1957
You ask me about Imme. Her father is a country doctor in a little town in West Germany, he works hard and makes a good living. Her mother came from a wealthy Berlin family which owned some kind of factory and lost everything during and after the war. Imme’s upbringing was impoverished gentility, combined with the chaos of war and Russian occupation. She had a year in England, as a guest in an English family. After that a year in Spain where she was governess to a family of nine kids ranging in age from one to fifteen. In English and Spanish she is completely fluent. We never talk anything but English.
After sixty years I can see more clearly how lucky we all were to have Imme arrive at our home when she was needed. Verena found Imme herself and understood what a treasure she had found. Verena was always grateful to Imme for holding the family together when she walked out. For me, being a single dad was an ideal situation. Having Imme as a young and capable helper made the situation even better. I had always been better as a father than as a husband. When I first met Verena, it was Katrin who brought us together, and being father to Katrin was as important as being husband to Verena. When Verena left, Imme became to me like a grown-up daughter, a delightful companion without the complications of being married. We told the children that Imme would leave and go back to Germany after two years. They said later that they always hoped and suspected that Imme would stay. My parents had found Verena difficult and often hostile when I was married to her. They were secretly glad when Verena left and immediately gave a warm welcome to Imme. During my two years as a single dad, I held back from any display of affection for Imme, but it was obvious to us all that she would fit well into the role of wife to me and mother to my children.
APRIL 29, 1957
Did you see the comet? Tonight at nine o’clock it was a beautiful sight, with a clear moonless night to show it at its best. I pulled the children out of their beds and took them out in the garden with the telescope to look at it. We also saw three moons of Jupiter. The comet was magnificent in the telescope. I am happy the children could see it, and they will long remember it as something special.
On Friday I rushed down to Washington to be chairman of a meeting of the American Physical Society. This was exciting because there was announced the result of an experiment at Columbia for which I worked out the theory. The experiment has succeeded beautifully and gives a result exactly opposite to what everybody expected. So I shall have a good time defending my theory against people who want to disbelieve the result. I am confident my part of it is right. The world is not so simple as our friends Yang and Lee had hoped. Their main idea still stands and is a permanent step forward of great importance. On Sunday Imme and I sang the Brahms Requiem.
TUESDAY, MAY 14, BROOKHAVEN
Yesterday I had a telephone call from [Ed] Creutz in La Jolla saying that he has just been given $10 million by some Texas oil millionaires to establish a big program of research in the fusion energy problem. As a result of this Creutz said he must have me at La Jolla for a week in June to talk over how the program should be set up. I agreed to spend a week in La Jolla before we go to Berkeley. This is a convenient arrangement. I am happy to have the children for a while in La Jolla where we shall stay in a hotel with a swimming pool, and they will enjoy themselves thoroughly. I am also happy about the fusion program which sounds hopeful.
Ed Creutz was the chief scientist at General Atomic, the company that I was working for in 1956. He started a fusion program there that still survives after sixty years. I never worked on fusion myself, but I stayed in touch with the fusion experts at General Atomic and at Princeton.
On Saturday morning I took George to a psychologist to be tested for admission to the township kindergarten next September. This was a serious affair, more like an entrance examination to Winchester than the usual American-style personality test. They kept George busy answering questions for more than an hour, while Esther and I sat outside and read stories to each other. At the end the psychologist had to do a big calculation to find out George’s mental age. The reason for all this is that the township decided they will admit children up to six months under the normal age if they show superior ability in such an intelligence test. Esther being born in July got in automatically at 5-5 (five years and five months). George will be 4-6 and so he is a borderline case. It will be a great pity if he is two years behind Esthi all the way through school. The result of the calculation was that George has a mental age of 5-7. [His true age at that time was 4-2.] The psychologist was highly impressed with him and says he has not only a high intelligence but also exceptional ability to listen and concentrate. He said he will give him a strong recommendation to the school board. However, the school board will decide the admissions only in June, and it is not certain he will get in. If he doesn’t get in this year, he will have another chance to try for early admission to first grade at the same time next year. George was not at all worried by the whole procedure and also not very interested. When I asked him what questions he had been asked, he replied, “Oh I forgot already.”
MAY 19, 1957
Imme and I just came home from singing the B Minor Mass. This is a magnificent work. Unfortunately we were not quite up to singing it decently the first time through. The conductor stupidly refused to cut any of it, so we had no time for a second run-through. Still we improved as we went along, and by the time we reached the Sanctus, we were quite impressive.
The last two days in New York were good, and I feel nostalgic about leaving my job at Columbia. My students gave me a warm sendoff after the last lecture, and I was pleased to see that of the original thirty who had come to the first lecture, about eighty percent stuck the whole course through. That is a good average for such an advanced course. Then on Friday we had a final seminar meeting with Wu and Lee, the Chinese wonders, and a big Chinese lunch to go with it. They spoke generously of the help they had had from my minor contributions. Altogether it has been a good term, and I hope in a few years they may invite me again.
MAY 30, 1957, CHILLICOTHE, MISSOURI
Now we are three days and 1,240 miles away from home. The trip goes smoothly. We are not in a hurry and today stopped at five-thirty so we could have a leisurely supper and read a story to the children. The country is green and fresh after heavy rains. This afternoon we crossed the Mississippi, swollen and muddy grey, flowing rapidly to keep pace with the rain. We hear they are having enormous floods to the south in Texas and elsewhere. Up here the floods are comparatively minor. Imme and I drive two hours each at a stretch, and so we do not get too tired. The children are a little bored and have periodical fights and are otherwise charming and amusing.
This evening in the car they started a conversation which kept Imme and me in speechless astonishment. George said, “When I am grown up, I am going to have a station wagon, and I am going to have nobody coming with me. I shall drive across the country, and I shall have just luggage and luggage in the back but no children.” And Esthi: “But you know that you have to be careful never to ask anybody to marry you, and then you will not have any children. It is more difficult for me, because some people might ask me to marry them. But anyway I shall never say yes to them.” George: “And I shall live in a house all alone and keep the door locked so that children cannot get into it. And when you come to see me, you must knock on the door, and I will look at you through the window and make sure you don’t have any children before I let you in.” Esthi: “Just think of all the troubles we shall save by not having any children. And so much money we shall save too. Only it is a pity for Daddy because he will never be a grandfather.”
I wonder what kind of people these kids will be. At least they start with one advantage.
They are tough.
JULY 5, 1957
I have been waiting for some definite decision from Verena. So far I heard nothing. I expect a letter one of these days with a final yes or no. I am glad I left the decision to her. In the last resort I am not willing to have on my shoulders the responsibility for separating her from the children. That must be by her own choice if it is to happen.
JULY 19, 1957
Yesterday I got the decisive word from Verena. I think I should explain how this decision came to be made, so that you can see how the responsibility for it is shared. I wrote to her saying that I want her to come back to us, and that if she will come back, I shall give her as in the past my undivided care and love. But I said I will accept her back only on two conditions: (1) that after Kreisel flies back to England on August 22, she will neither see him nor communicate with him anymore; and (2) that she must come back for the reason of her love for me and the children, and not for any reasons of duty or obligations to us. She writes back as follows.
One thing is clear to me, the conditions you set on my coming back to you are unquestionably the right ones, and I am not able to fulfil them. I think we both know that for me at least to refuse to come back means choosing the harder way. For I doubt very much whether I shall ever overcome the emotional regrets for having left my children and for having left this marriage with you uncompleted. On the other hand I must not come back halfheartedly and I think I cannot do it wholeheartedly. Everything that I can produce so far in the way of rationalization seems to me only a vague approximation to the truth, and therefore I have little to say. I want you to know that you have no reason to worry about me. The crisis I went through this spring is overcome. It honestly pains me to send this letter off, and I hope you do not mind my inability to make a final statement with a heroic bang, though I know that things are growing in an irreversible direction. Love and happiness I wish you. V.
I copy this statement for you verbatim, because it seems to me to sum up in a few words the sensitivity of Verena, the intellectual penetration, and the refusal to compromise her vision of reality with any secondhand sentiments and comfortable simplifications.
SUNDAY, JULY 28, 1957
Such a quiet and cozy Sunday! In the morning Esther expressed a desire to go to church, so the party dress was put on, George was likewise washed and polished up, and the three of us walked down the hill to morning service. Imme said she had enough of Lutheran sermons to last her the rest of her life, so she stayed at home to enjoy a little solitude. I chose an Episcopal church to go to because I like to hear the words with which I am familiar. The church was brand new, built last year in a modern but not extreme style of architecture. The service was exactly as it might have been in any church in Kensington, except that the average age of the congregation was lower (there were a number of children besides mine) and the singing more vigorous. A youngish parson gave a quite intelligent sermon. My children sat through all of it (an hour and a quarter) with perfect decorum and almost complete silence. I found the whole thing restful and pleasant. Though I am not in the slightest degree inclined to return to the religious belief I lost at the age of fourteen, still I feel the children ought to be exposed to it, and the younger the better. It is always impressive to find that so many million people all over America are going to church each Sunday morning with the same King Edward prayer book we learned as children.
After the service we walked merrily up the hill again, and Esther said she wants to go to church every Sunday. But then George said rather apologetically, “I think that for me this church is just a little bit too dull.” That was his first and only complaint, after one and a quarter hours of sitting silent on a hard wooden bench.
AUGUST 19, 1957
This morning the kids walked all the way down with me to the office and all the way back alone. This was the second time they had done it. It is only about half a mile, but with many corners and road crossings where cars are all the time passing. Through the summer I have been training them to come with me, each day a little bit further, and now finally they got up to my room and are very proud of themselves. When they walk home alone, I am as anxious as any mother, but I never show them that.
These children are amazing. They can do everything. I am not only a foolishly proud father, it is really true that they are the despair of all the other parents. This morning I drove over the hill to Walnut Creek to watch the children at their swimming class. The class consists of Esther and George and an unfortunate girl called Paula who is the same size as Esthi and is a quite good swimmer. But at the end of the lesson Paula just burst into tears because she couldn’t stand the competition.
The real hero of this drama is Katrin. The other day I had a letter from her which quite bowled me over.
Dear Free, I received your letter this morning I am very glad to hear that you and the kids are having some fun even though all thease things are happining. I hope that you and the kids are not too sad about it. Please do not let the kids see that you are unhappy or they shall be more so. I am very sorry that all this happened, but I know that Mommy did what was best. She spent a very long time thinking about it. I hope that she never marries KREISEL (ugg!). I have cried many nights. (I hate all the people who keep pestering me and asking me what is wrong as if I was a baby.) What should I say to them? Is Imme going to stay with you? I hope that she will, she seems to be very nice to the kids. I would like to know what you are working on this summer. Are you working on a problem or are you just hunting? You know that I do not know anything about PHYSICS but I am interested in what my father does because I am very very proud of you. (I know that you are very clever, nice, and that I love you.) Please excuse me for the awkward way that I write things, but I do not know how to write very well especialy when I am nervous. I cannot wait until September. I will be so happy to see you again. Love Katarina.
You can imagine how proud and happy I am to get a letter like this. Now I shall have to do some physics and deserve her high opinions.
OCTOBER 29, 1957
Tonight when I came home from work, it was already dark, and George said, “I have just been outside and I could see Venus and Orion.” I did not need to check that his statement was accurate. He has his eyes wide open for all natural phenomena, birds and butterflies, worms and clouds. Esther is absorbed with her schoolwork and her friends and has less time for looking at the world. On Thursday afternoon I went down to the school to receive Esther’s report card and spent fifteen minutes talking with her teacher. The teacher was highly impressed with her and said she is cheerful as well as industrious. Next Thursday I shall have an hour with Katrin’s teachers, and that will be a less idyllic picture. But Katrin is working hard and getting good marks, and she is learning to organize her work so it is done with less pain.
Today the whole institute is buzzing with excitement as the rumours go around that our colleagues Yang and Lee are to get the Nobel Prize. I believe this will be announced officially within a few days. It is a wonderful thing for the institute. (Yang is here permanently, and Lee for the year.) It is quite unprecedented for the prize to be given so soon after the work which earned it. But in this case the epoch-making character of the work was understood unusually quickly, so there is no reason why there should be the customary ten-year delay. I feel a little despondent sometimes when I contrast the magnitude of what Frank Yang has done with the barrenness of my own last few years. But I do not feel any worse because of the Nobel Prize. This prize is only the public recognition of a fact which has been clear to us here for some time, that Frank is the brightest young physicist now living. It will cut Yang and Lee off from normal human relations with their friends for some time. They are besieged by newspapermen and hide as much as they can. Luckily there is Franklin Yang (aged six) and James Lee (aged four) who are good friends to Esther and George and are often running around our house with their cheerful American voices and Chinese faces. The chilling demands of public fame have no effect on them.
One name was conspicuously absent in the announcement of the Nobel Prize. Chien Shiung Wu did not share it. She had done at least an equal share of the work. Like Lise Meitner and Jocelyn Burnell, she made a discovery that would certainly have won her the prize if she had not been a woman. Chien Shiung Wu never complained. She shared the attitude of Jocelyn Burnell, the discoverer of pulsars, the rapidly pulsing radio sources that turned out to be rotating neutron stars. Jocelyn was recently asked by a student whether she was annoyed by this lack of recognition. Jocelyn replied, “Oh no, I feel much better when people ask me why I didn’t get the prize, rather than asking me why I did get it.”
DECEMBER 19, 1957
Yesterday I went to Trenton and became an American citizen. Somehow this doesn’t seem important. I made up my mind to it long ago.
I was admitted to citizenship together with a large group of immigrants from various countries. The judge who swore us in made a speech, congratulating us for having moved from lands of slavery to the land of freedom. I felt like shouting that in Britain we freed our slaves thirty years before the Americans freed theirs. But I had the good sense to keep quiet when I shook hands with the judge.