Walking with Lefschetz Baltimore 1927–1928

Zariski brought the old world with him to the new. As disarming as Enriques and almost as formidable as Castelnuovo, he carried the high seriousness and broad mathematical culture of the Italians to the quiet shores of Baltimore in 1927.

Johns Hopkins University, whose academic programs had been inaugurated in 1875 with the help of J. J. Sylvester, had played an important role in the development of American mathematics. Although Sylvester, one of the nineteenth century's great mathematicians, had spent only a handful of years in Baltimore, he had managed to establish the American Journal of Mathematics and to gather together a lively group of research mathematicians, including Thomas S. Fiske, Charles S. Peirce, and Thomas Craig.²⁴ Conceived of primarily as a research institute, Hopkins had led the United States in providing doctoral training before the founding of the University of Chicago in 1892.²⁵ At the time of Zariski's arrival, Hopkins was still one of the few American universities to offer the Ph.D. in mathematics.

It was therefore all the more surprising to Zariski to find himself in the fall of 1927 in a department that seemed to him rather dull. There were only three permanent members: Frank Morley, an English émigré like Sylvester who was serving his last year as chairman; Francis Murnaghan, a young and vigorous man with whom Zariski shared no mathematical interests; and Abraham Cohen, with whom he was able to enjoy an occasional pleasant and lively discussion.