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From Europe to Brazil: Gleb Wataghin and the scientists’ mutual cooperation in times of intolerance and war

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Lettera Matematica

Abstract

The Russian–Italian physicist Gleb Wataghin (1899–1986) lived and worked in Brazil between 1934 and 1949. During his Brazilian residence, he established personal and professional contacts with physicists and mathematicians from countries such as the United States of America, Italy, France, besides Brazil. In this paper, we discuss Wataghin’s participation in a mutual cooperation network of scientists in times of political hostility, in a transnational perspective. As we will argue, Wataghin made use of different tactics in order to help his colleagues to find positions in Brazilian universities and in the scientific field.

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Notes

  1. This group was composed of the mathematicians Luigi Fantappiè and Giacomo Albanese, the geologists Ettore Onorato and Ottorino De Fiore Di Cropani, the statistician Luigi Galvani, the Italian literature professors Francesco Piccolo and Giuseppe Ungaretti, the Greek literature professors Attilio Venturi and Vittorio de Falco, and the physicists Giuseppe Occhialini and Gleb Wataghin [24].

  2. According to Certeau [11], tactics are the art of the weak, meaning by this the actions one can develop in face of the strategies made by strong forces, such as governments, war efforts, and others.

  3. We personally consulted the originals of most of the documents cited in this paper, but they are also available at the Digital Collection of the Institute of Physics: http://acervo.if.usp.br/. We would like to thank Walkiria Chassot, who kindly helped us with the research of images.

  4. At that time, Brazilian Army and Navy was experiencing technical difficulties, such as problems with the importation of essential materials for their projects. From that moment, they had to produce gunpowder and cannonballs on Brazilian soil and for this reason they needed the help of the University of São Paulo’s scientists [17].

  5. State of São Paulo Public Archive. Instrução Pública. EO1145 - Registros de contratos de professores estrangeiros (para USP) – 1943, fl. 51.

  6. In his letter, Wataghin wrote only Sonino’s surname. We did not find any other information about him among Wataghin’s documents, but in the same year an Italian mathematician called Sergio Sonnino came to Brazil, helped by his professor Tullio Levi–Civita, to escape from Italian antisemitism. In Brazil, Sonnino worked as professor in a military technical school, in Rio de Janeiro. In 1942, he moved to São Paulo to be professor at the Faculty of Engineering at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University [9].

  7. Historical Collection of the Institute of Physics at University of São Paulo. Hereinafter, AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Ignacio Azevedo do Amaral, 13/09/1939. 2.24, box 2, folder 5.

  8. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Ignacio Azevedo do Amaral, 13/09/1939. 2.24, b. 2, f. 5.

  9. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Menezes de Oliveira, 31/10/1939. 2.26, box 2, f. 5.

  10. The German physicist Bernard Gross arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1933. Between 1934 and 1937, he worked in the Institute of Technology, where he was involved in theoretical research on cosmic rays [30].

  11. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Menezes de Oliveira, 31/10/1939. 2.26, b. 2, f. 5.

  12. A few years earlier, in 1933, Giuseppe Occhialini had worked in England alongside Patrick Blackett, when “they discovered the positron and the phenomenon of particle rains” [29, p 274].

  13. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to A. Occhialini, 14/02/1941. 2.47, b. 2, f. 5. The original in Italian: “[…] la Royal Society non abbia trovato inopportuno nel momento attuale di mettere in evidenza il contributo scientifico di un italiano. Ritengo che il riconoscimento, da parte dei nostri nemici, della partecipazione di suo figlio a due fra le più grandi scoperte in fisica sperimentale (quella dell’elettrone positivo e delle creazione delle coppie) acquista un significato speciale in questo tempo di guerra”.

  14. AHIFUSP. Letter from A. Occhialini to Gleb Wataghin, 17/03/1941. 2.48, b. 2, f. 5.

  15. The Department of Mathematics at the FFCL/USP hired the following Bourbaki group members between 1940s and 1950s: André Weil, Jean Dieudonné, Jean Delsarte, Alexander Grothendieck, Laurent Schwartz, Charles Ehresmann, Jean-Louis Koszul and Samuel Eilenberg [20].

  16. André Weil tried to escape from the war in Europe, but he was recruited by the British army. He could finally emigrate to the United States at the end of 1941 thanks to the support of some friends and a Rockefeller scholarship aimed at supporting French scientists. For more information on Nicolas Bourbaki’s trajectory, see Pires [20].

  17. Wataghin used to write André Weyl instead of André Weil.

  18. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Neumann, 13/01/1942. 2.65, b. 2, f. 5.

  19. The letter only mentions the surname, but as Wataghin mentions André Weil’s name in the third-person in the body of text, it can be inferred that the letter was intended for Hermann Weyl.

  20. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Hermann Weyl, 02/07/1943. 2.91, b. 2, f. 6.

  21. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Oscar Zariski, 06/12/1944. 2.113, b. 2, f. 6.

  22. AHIFUSP. Letter from Oscar Zariski to Gleb Wataghin, 28/12/1944. 2.114, b. 2, f. 6.

  23. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Giuseppe Occhialini, 28/05/1942. 2.73, b. 2, f. 6.

  24. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Giuseppe Occhialini, 28/05/1942. 2.73, b. 2, f. 6. The letter is a copy of the one sent to Occhialini. The authorship is attributed to Wataghin, according to information in the inventory of the AHIFUSP.

  25. Wataghin mentions only the surname Chagas, but the recipient was probably the physician Carlos Chagas Filho, who worked on Biophysics and was a scientist interested in Scientific Politics. In 1945, he created the Laboratory of Biophysics of the National Faculty of Medicine at University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro [16].

  26. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to [Carlos] Chagas, 06/10/1944. 2.106, b. 2, f. 6. At the same period, Occhialini cooperated with Chagas Filho’s group of biophysics, in Rio de Janeiro [3].

  27. For more information on Tagliacozzo’s situation in Italy during the racial laws, see: AHIFUSP. Letter from Carlo Tagliacozzo to Gleb Wataghin, 20/02/1947. 2.152, b. 2, f. 7.

  28. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Chagas, 18/11/1944. 2.110, b. 2, f. 6.

  29. In those times, the Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas imposed many rules for the circulation of Italians, Germans and Japanese. For example, they were prohibited from speaking their native languages publicly. On the persecution of the so-called “subjects of the Axis” in Brazil, see Santos [22].

  30. However, we did not find any response either from Carlos Chagas Filho or from the Federal Government about the contracts of these professors.

  31. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Harlow Shapley, 04/02/1945. 2.115, b. 2, f. 6.

  32. AHIFUSP. Letter from Harlow Shapley to Gleb Wataghin, 14/02/1945. 2.116, b. 2, f. 6.

  33. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to Neumann, 13/01/1942. 2.65, b. 2, f. 5. There are typed drafts of the letter, whose authorship is attributed to Wataghin, according to AHIFUSP’s inventory.

  34. AHIFUSP. Letter from Guido Beck to Gleb Wataghin, 17/07/1943. 2.93, b. 2, f. 6.

  35. AHIFUSP.Letter from Gleb Wataghin to San Tiago Dantas, 25/08/1943. 2.94, b. 2, f. 6.

  36. To date, no further information was found on who these teachers were.

  37. AHIFUSP. Letter from Gleb Wataghin to João Perllot and Argemiro Musell, 08/09/1944. 2.105, b. 2, f. 6. The support of John Neumann and Albert Einstein in the hiring of Antonio Monteiro is mentioned in the dissertation by Fábio Araújo [5] on the trajectory of this Portuguese mathematician in Brazil.

  38. AHIFUSP. Telegram by Antonio Monteiro to Gleb Wataghin, s./d. 2.356, b. 2, f. 9.

  39. AHIFUSP. Letter from A. Occhialini to Gleb Wataghin, 26/07/1946. 2.135, b. 2, f. 6.

  40. AHIFUSP. Letter from T. Boggio to Gleb Wataghin, 19/02/1947. 2.150, b. 2, f. 7. The original in Italian: “[…] le condizioni della vita si fanno qui sempre più difficili”.

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    Luciana Vieira Souza da Silva & Bruno Bontempi Junior

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da Silva, L.V.S., Bontempi Junior, B. From Europe to Brazil: Gleb Wataghin and the scientists’ mutual cooperation in times of intolerance and war. Lett Mat Int 6, 203–210 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40329-018-0240-6

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