A Biased and Personal Description of GR at Syracuse University, 1951–1961

Summary

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.