UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1057
BECK, ANATOLE

BECK, ANATOLE (1930-)
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
At UW: 1958-2010

Interviewed: 	2009 (2 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Robert Lange
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	3 hours, 15 minutes

Abstract: In his two September 2009 interviews with Bob Lange, Anatole Beck talks about his work and activism from the 1950s to the late 2000s.  Beck chronicled his family background and education which influenced the development of his independent personality.  He detailed elements of his work in mathematics that had challenged the field, and provided some anecdotes about his students and colleagues. He further explained his motivation for becoming an activist during the late 1960s and his efforts to maintain faculty governance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He provided insights on unionization, the “knowledge business,” national employment policy, the Vietnam era protests, and the UW-WSU Merger. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: New York City, NY; Yale University; University of Wisconsin-Madison; game theory; National Science Foundation (NSF); topographical dynamics; Gustav Hedlund; Continuous Flows in the Plane (1974); Myrtle and Jonathan Lewin; London School of Economics (LSE); the 1960s; Vietnam; student protests; Dow riot; American Federation of Teacher (AFT); Wisconsin Federation of Teachers; William Sewell; Joseph Kauffman; US Army Mathematics Research Center (MRC); University Committee; American Association of University Professors (AAUP); Board of Regents of the State College System v. Roth; David Adamany; Patrick Lucey; Merger ROTC; Keith Cohen; tenure.

First Interview Session (September 23, 2009): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:20	Question: Talk about your parents and birthplace. Answer: Beck was born in NYC to on March 19, 1930. Both his mother and father were immigrants (from Brest-Litovsk and Kovno [now Kaunas, Lithuania] respectively) who worked in NYC in the garment trade. 

00:02:00	Follow up: Because of anti-Semitism or for a better life? Answer: Both; the first in-fluenced the second. He said his mother came before the 1922 restriction on immi-gration, but his father came in under an assumed name and changed “Bakovitch” to “Beck” in Utica NY. 

00:03:21	[no question] He recounted his mother’s story, observing that her father was a sage of the Talmud, which made him especially marriageable. His mother came to the US with her older brother and younger sister, though an older sibling already lived in SC.

00:06:01	[no question] Beck contextualized about his coming to UW. After graduating from Yale in 1951, he had a fellowship to study in “a genuine graduate program in the summer.” He explained taking courses in game theory (using von Neumann & Morgenstern’s 1944 text), something that resonated with him partially because of his parents’ union orientation. He gave some context about his family’s socialist leanings, which he thought was popular among Jews because of their hunger for emancipation.

00:11:02	[no question] He talked about returning to Yale and then coming a second summer to UW on an NSF grant. But due to his effort wooing his future wife, his grades dropped and his scholarship wasn’t renewed. He did well enough to gain a reputation at Yale, but not to be viewed as sufficiently driven to stay there. He recounted his intention to study with renown algebraist Nathan Jacobson at Yale, but quipped about how they had different ideas about how classroom interaction should happen and thus didn’t get along. He almost didn’t pass preliminary exams because of this.

00:17:34	[no question] He reflected on what he called his “self-indulgent” personality, doing what he wanted to do. He thought that while it had denied him “success” by others’ standards, it had generally served him well and he felt successful.

00:18:17	[no question] He cited an example of his work that colleagues didn’t think was true mathematics--The Knowledge Business. This book analyzed how knowledge was an immensely profitable business despite the perception of Wisconsinites. Despite the difficulties of “the knowledge business,” much of the increase in America’s economy is due to increases in knowledge. He cited the examples of the GI Bill and the Sputnik era.

00:24:07	Follow up: Your dissertation? Answer: Beck recalled working on one subject (probability in Banach spaces), but re-inventing another (topological dynamics) in the process. Doing a year of post-doctoral study at Tulane on a Navy assistantship, where he developed an interest in topological dynamics—particularly in a solution he developed to a previously unsolved question. After explaining his solution to his professor (he detailed the way he solved it), and while on fellowship in Europe, he was able to develop an exception (and proof) to a major theorem, which became his first published work after his PhD. (1958)

00:31:29	Follow up: Did your dissertation get attention? Answer: Not immediately. He recoun-ted having applied for and been offered the UW job in 1956 after having talked to former professors (but before he’d done the Denmark work).  At the time, UW was considered a very special (innovative and progressive) university—“the city on the hill”—in a beautiful location.

00:35:54	[no question] He lamented that over the course of years, faculty governance had been diluted by repeated attempts, especially after the Merger, by the Regents to increase their share of governance.  He cited examples of how faculty now weren’t asked about critical issues.

00:38:23	Question: What were you hired to teach? Answer: He wasn’t told—just to be an assistant professor of mathematics. The department didn’t know either about his work in Denmark or about his future work in Washington DC in 1960.

00:40:39	[no question] He said that shortly after his second major breakthrough in 1960, he felt he should be tenured; when the department initially declined, he leveraged an offer from Northwestern into a promotion at UW. He only regretted that his brother later got a job at NU.

00:42:41	[no question] He recalled “pushing” (almost singlehandedly) the subject of probability in Banach spaces until a young French scholar took it up. He also related how he discovered that his theorem about topological dynamics wasn’t as new as he thought, having been earlier written about by Gustav Hedlund. 

00:46:33	[no question] Giving more specifics about his work on continuous flows in the plane, he explained how he developed this theorem and held conferences and symposia while presenting himself as a probabilist. 

00:49:16	[no question] He related taking on a South African husband-wife team of graduate students in 1967, including them in a 1968-69 research fellowship. 

00:50:12	[no question] Following a break in recording, Beck reflected on his unachievable childhood aspiration to be an inventor, which he’d achieved by being a mathematician

00:52:21	When asked by Lange, Beck returned to his research fellowship in England, after briefly considering returning to Israel. During this year, he began his major work (Continuous Flows in the Plane, 1974), which included Jonathan & Myrtle Lewin’s theses and contributed to the study of continuous flows in the plane. 
 
00:56:20	Follow up: London? Answer: He gave more context on why he didn’t return to Jerusalem in 1968, having spent 1964-65 there in primitive housing and not able to secure adequate housing for 1968. At the same time, he got an invitation from a friend in Warwick working on topological dynamics to come for the year.

00:59:06	[no question] He talked more about the Lewins—dedicating the book to her, Myrtle changing her name to Mirit in order to go to Israel, and their later work and divorce.

01:01:02	[no question] Beck continued his narrative relating that in summer 1969 he went to the University of Erlangen in Germany, where he met the Springer series editor who published his book. 

01:02:11	[no question] Later on, a professorship in mathematics at LSE opened, which he considered the best job in the world. While he thought he’d stay there permanently, the demands of a difficult divorce settlement forced him to return to UW.

01:05:33	[no question] He reflected on retirement, observing that retirement at 65 should only be for manual jobs and suspecting the US needed someone of the stature of Roosevelt to repair the current economic situation.

01:07:30	Follow up: After returning to UW? Answer: He talked about remarrying.

01:08:09	Question: Talk about the late 1960s. Answer: Beck recalled that in the years before going to England, he agreed to his mother’s request to focus on his education rather than getting involved in social activism. He did recount some ways in which he was active, standing in solidarity with other assistant professors early in his career and getting interested in 1962 in the American Federation of Teachers.

01:13:01	[no question] In 1967, he said, his mother died. This moved him to get more involved in events on campus. So he recounted his involvement in the first (TA) strike on campus, though his activism was very moderate until the Dow riot, when he felt it necessary for responsible people to be on site to witness what was happening (since the police and students were recounting different stories of events) and stand up to administration. This was the moment when his reputation changed, he said.

01:17:05	[no question] He said that since the Dow riot, there were times when one needed to say things, and he was willing to say them—he cited the example of the firing of a professor at UW-Superior without evidence.

01:19:13	[no question] Upon returning from England, he related, he was asked to run for vice president of WI Federation of Teachers, in which role he served for 8 years.

01:20:15	Follow up: Was this activity hurting relationships in the Math dept? Answer: He didn’t think so, but thought it diverted him from total immersion in research. He said he’d gone to LSE to try to be the Newton of mathematics—like von Neumann, to try to numericize value/economics that makes game theory really work mathematically.

01:23:22	[no question] He reflected on the paradoxes in mathematics, claiming he could explain the fable of the tortoise and the hare in mathematical terms, which few believed he could do. He proposed that if we taught people simply to do calculations, we are just teaching them to be inferior copies of machines, which could do these calculations easily—he tried to teach students to nurture ingenuity.

01:26:47	Follow up: You’re advocating contemplation rather than technical expertise? Answer: He talked about being a “mathematical expert,” recounting the example of the inter-change between Georg Cantor and Kronecker to illustrate that simple mathematical truths are wonderful. He surmised that if technical operations didn’t “touch your soul,” you wouldn’t likely remember it.

01:34:06	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (September 28, 2009): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:20	Question: Talk about your role as a campus activist. Answer: Referring to the 1967 Dow riot, he related that Chancellors Sewell (who he admired) had not actually been on site for the incident, but that Joe Kauffman had “read the riot act” to Sewell about what he should do in response. He recalled the meeting after the riot, in which they tried to separate Sewell from decisions the administration had taken.

00:04:03	Follow up: Was it a Faculty Senate meeting? Answer: No, it didn’t exist yet. All faculty were welcome, but there was some self-selection involved.

00:05:15	[no question] Beck discussed the unfortunate (and obvious) placement of the Army Math Research Center on campus, which made it a focal point for people’s grievances against the government or Vietnam—though he thought the grievances had nothing to do with MRC. Later, ROTC became a similar target.

00:07:24	Beck and Lange discussed the timing of the Dow riot, which Beck recalled was the same year as an unsuccessful attempt by the sociology dept to confer an honorary doctorate on Martin Luther King, Jr. He related the controversy over this motion and fears that Milwaukee demonstrations would spread to Madison.

00:10:35	[no question] He remembered thinking after the riots that if Dow interviewers had simply moved interviews off campus, the incident might have been avoided. He characterized the entire protest as a form of “confrontationality,” recounting specific tactics of the police and students.

00:14:06	Follow up: Did you have a reputation for activism before Dow? Answer: Not at all; he reviewed the agreement he’d made with his mother years before to keep his nose clean, which he later felt was juvenile. He also recalled thinking that if faculty were simply there as observers, things wouldn’t get out of hand. Follow up: Were you surprised by faculty reaction against you? Answer: He was, but didn’t think he should have been, since it threatened the comfortable life of a faculty member.

00:18:54	[no question] He evaluated his role in the protest era, observing that he took part in relatively few protests, and with a minor role. He simply tried to explain to people at gatherings why he thought Vietnam was hopeless.

00:21:43	Follow up: After that meeting, did you pursue you views with your colleagues? Answer: He remembered being uncomfortable being viewed as a “firebrand” and approached to sign radical petitions. While he considered himself moderate, he wasn’t like the majority who live in “silent submission”—he always spoke the truth. 

00:23:38 	[no question] Continuing to talk about his unlikely characterization as a firebrand, Beck speculated that docile populations led to revolution.  Though a society in which revolution is impossible becomes increasingly intolerable, he didn’t want to live through revolution. He cited examples from the French and Russian revolutions, in which there weren’t “revolutionaries,” but common people’s choices were frustrated.

00:29:49	[no question] Continuing to discuss revolution, he wondered whether the “health care racket” could produce revolution (since people could vote, or “make a revolution without a gun”). He also related a speech from Marat/Sade which explained why revolutions fail by noting that “everyone want to bring something with him through the revolution”—people may oppose the same thing but not support the same thing.

00:33:00	Follow up: Did you ever talk in these terms to the faculty? Answer: Not in this depth; but in 1972, when he was elected to the University Committee, he spoke on behalf of the AAUP (or the union). But he limited his union activism on the committee to opposition to Merger, which he thought destructive to Madison.

00:34:49	[no question] Talking about his opinion of Merger, he recounted the case of Roth v. Regents, in which an Oshkosh professor was denied tenure on the basis of criticism of the president of the school. The court ruled in Roth’s favor, but the ruling was later overturned by the Rehnquist court.

00:39:26	[no question] Returning to Merger, Beck suspected Merger was David Adamany’s idea, not Gov. Lucey’s. He then talked about Adamany’s later reputation as a union-buster.

00:41:35	[no question] Returning to his service on the University Committee, he recalled fighting as a conservative that there should be 2 units in the System—one comprised of large units (Madison and Milwaukee) and the other of the state colleges. Follow up: Were you alone in that position? Answer: People sympathized, but thought that fighting the Merger wouldn’t do any good. But he believed in speaking the truth.

00:43:49	Follow up: Did Merger go to faculty for a vote? Answer: No; many were against it but he was the only opposition. Beck continued to explain his opposition, citing his The Knowledge Business, to the “democracy” of all the System schools being equal.

00:45:55	[no question] He moved to talk about later faculty issues, specifically the pensions problem, observing that it misunderstood the economy of knowledge production. He further opposed forced retirement at 65, since people’s work weeks have become more efficient since the 1930s.

00:51:00	Lange and Beck discussed current problems in employment and unemployment in the US. Beck reflected on why the largest group of jobless workers uncounted in unemployment figures was women, partly due to the high cost of child-care. He suspected that if the work week were reduced and the number of years of work were increased, it would solve some of these problems by making labor more productive.

00:57:42	Follow up: Did you have these discussions with economics faculty? Answer: Not at UW. He did talk to several economists at LSE, but couldn’t get them to understand that the limit to product was the number of jobs produced. 

01:02:07	[no question] Continuing to reflect on his observations about employment and the work week, he regretted that he’d not been able to finish the paper and felt himself running short of the time. He related this directly to his thesis that those facing retirement were confronted with drastic changes in their way-of-life.

01:05:55	Question: Were you involved with the ROTC protests? Answer: Only casually.

01:07:28	Question: The University Committee is an honor. Answer: He admitted that it was something he wanted to do and he saw a chance to do it in 1973, circulating a self-nomination and getting a plurality. He didn’t see this as a clear mandate, but wanted to do good there. He resigned this appointment in order to take the job at LSE.

01:11:25	[no question] He talked about how he chose the “the best job in the world” at LSE over his failing marriage, though his wife called for the divorce. He talked about taking his son to London, and his daughter’s struggles to get into university.

01:14:45	Question: Other issues you addressed? Answer: He reviewed running for the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers, but otherwise let things come to him. He talked about the issue of 5-year tenure review, which he fought unsuccessfully and which he thought was not real tenure. All the cases of tenure revocation, he thought, had been at the state colleges.

01:19:50	[no question] Continuing to talk about 5-year tenure review, he talked about the Keith Cohen case, in which the university—he believed wrongly—determined to get rid of Cohen rather than rehabilitate him because of the “drumbeat” in the state papers. He suspected that Cohen wanted to lose the case and go back to his hometown; he personally was not on Cohen’s side, but the side of the law.

01:28:11	Follow up: Did you take criticism for that? Answer: The only adverse repercussion he could remember was that the chair of Comp Lit—Mary Layoun--didn’t have any contact with him afterward. He talked about the deep trouble in that dept, and told the story of “Dr. Dr. Richardson,” who was denied tenure in Comp Lit and took a doctorate in law.

01:34:07	Question: When did the faculty Senate come into existence? Answer: He recalled that it came into existence in the mid-1970s, and his expectation, that it would become a “dull chore that no one wants to do” since it supplanted the “Young Turks” who cared about governance. He, however, took it as his mission.

01:36:44	Follow up: So it’s not because the faculty grew too large? Answer: No; it had become unmanageable, but the question was manageable to whom? He said by the 1970s, the center of power had shifted away from the faculty

01:40:50	End of Second Interview Session

End of Oral History #1057