Wartime Student Days

Abstract

My parents had emigrated from Austria to England while I was in the Swiss boarding school. However, when Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, I had to cut short my high school studies and return to my parents in England as quickly as possible, in fact the day after the “Anschluss” (the German annexation of Austria). The reason for the hurry was that my British Resident’s permit might be revoked because my Austrian passport was now invalid. I was 18 then and would have had another year at school in the usual system. Instead, I flew back in a state of great excitement from Zürich to London on a DC3. For me, it was a dramatic situation: I might not be allowed into England where my parents were, and on top of that, it was the first commercial flight I had taken. I was so excited I fell off the steps of the DC3 in Croydon (London) where my father awaited me. (A good thing they didn’t have 747s in those days!) Fortunately, I was allowed into England and soon applied to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study engineering or the Mechanical Sciences Tripos as they were pleased to call it. I had wanted to study physics, but my father felt unsure, despite my good school record, that I could make a living as a physicist. And he knew that I was good at practical things and so thought engineering was the right thing for me. I had to learn the specific subjects needed for the Cambridge entrance examination, like Latin, which I had not done at all, and English history. I did not have much trouble with the other subjects of the entrance examination. Mathematics, though different from what I had learned at school, I could learn easily, and mostly by myself.