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Being Julia Robinson’s Sister Constance Reid

When I was asked to speak tonight, I could not Julia was born twenty-three months after I refuse. This is a truly celebratory occasion, and was, essentially two years—the worst possible I feel that as Julia’s sister I should be here. Yet difference in age for siblings, in my opinion: I find myself in a very difficult position. Here I close enough for the younger to almost catch up am to speak about Julia, and being spoken about with the elder, who is nevertheless always just is the last thing Julia would want. As a math- a little bit ahead. I have to confess that as chil- ematician, as was done by Carol Wood on Mon- dren we fought almost all the time. My earliest day morning, yes. But as a person, no. memory of Julia is of her tearing the hair off my So I decided my subject would be simply doll while I poked the eyes out of hers! We were “Being Julia Robinson’s Sister”. That is the one not close. In addition to age and sibling rivalry subject connected with Julia that I can talk freely separating us, there was also a serious illness about, because it’s my life, not Julia’s. But in the that was to keep Julia away from home for a year course of the evening, talking about our sister- and out of school from the time she was nine hood—from not so much a personal point of until she was thirteen. It was to affect her en- view as from what one might call “a point of view tire life, preventing her from having the children pertaining somewhat to mathematics”—I can she very much wanted and making it physically tell you something about Julia that will not vio- impossible for her to take on the rigors of a late her desire for personal privacy and some- full-time professional position at Berkeley. thing also about the feelings that she expressed While I could tell you something about these to me on the subject of her other sisters—all the early years, I prefer to concentrate on that longer women here and the others who are math- period of our lives that extended up to Julia’s ematicians. death when we were very close. That period began in 1950 when I married and moved to San Constance Reid lives at 70 Piedmont Street, San Fran- Francisco and Julia returned to Berkeley after a cisco, CA 94117. Her e-mail address is chreid@ year at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. aol.com. At that time she had been married since 1941 This article is an adaptation of a banquet talk given to Raphael Robinson, who had been her number by Constance Reid at the AWM’s Julia Robinson Cele- theory teacher at Berkeley; she had gotten her bration of Women in Mathematics at MSRI, July 1-3, Ph.D. in 1948 under Alfred Tarski with an im- 1996. portant result in a combination of logic and

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number theory, and at RAND she had solved an ond World War and had been known to the pub- important problem in game theory. She had also lic for only about five years. Julia also explained begun to work on Hilbert’s Tenth Problem. to me the connection between Mersenne num- I knew practically nothing about these math- bers and “perfect” numbers. This achievement ematical achievements or interests. Once, a year of Raphael’s interested me; it struck me as some- or two before, when Julia came home to San thing I could write about that would interest Diego for a visit, she had tried to explain to me other people too. what she had done in her thesis. I did not have Julia promptly encouraged me, in a very prac- the faintest idea what she was talking about or tical way, by inviting me to lunch with Dick why it was significant, but I remember feeling a Lehmer, the mathematician in charge of SWAC, little sorry for her because she could not ex- so that I could find out from him what SWAC plain something important that she had done looked like and how it was operated. At that even to her sister. Oddly enough, I did not feel time neither Raphael nor Julia had ever actually sorry for myself for not being able to understand. seen one of the new computers, and it is still re- Later in the time I am talking about, when not markable, even to experts, that Raphael had suc- only I but our entire family had migrated from cessfully programmed SWAC simply by study- San Diego to the Bay Area, Julia and I saw a lot ing the manual. Well, Dick was helpful, and his of each other. We met for lunch in San Francisco wife, Emma, was helpful, too; it was she who sug- and shopped furniture stores and talked end- gested that I send my article to Scientific Amer- lessly both in person and on the phone. We had ican. To make a long story short, Scientific Amer- many common interests. She was a housewife ican published it, a publisher read it and wrote who did mathematics, and I was a housewife who to ask if I, Constance Reid, who had left math- wrote. There was also politics—this was the era ematics for Latin in her sophomore year in high of Joseph McCarthy and the infamous Loyalty school, would be interested in writing a little Oath at Berkeley. book on numbers for him. When we got together as a family, which we Now what still amazes me is that Julia did not frequently did, Raphael liked to make conver- try to talk me out of this project but actually en- sation with me by telling me things about math- couraged me. Raphael did not encourage me, but ematics. He was a remarkable expositor, as some he was not negative either. The publisher was of you know, and he told me about Gödel’s work, thinking about a book on numbers to go with a and Turing machines, and the theory of sets, and book he had published on the alphabet. This the pearls of number theory, and n-dimensional suggested to me a book about the digits, geometry, and knot theory—maybe even since the Scientific Amer- about Hilbert’s problems. I was somewhat ican article had been used to such “teaching”, because during in a way a story a brief period in college when Julia and I about “6” as shared a room she used to tell me about the first per- things she had read in Men of Math- fect number. ematics, which had just appeared at that I thought I time. would just Well, all this effort on the part of both treat the Robinsons was to bear fruit one morning in other digits in a 1951 when Julia, in the course of a telephone similar conversation, reported to me the suc- cess of a program of Raphael’s for testing the primality of very large Mersenne num- bers on one of the new giant computers—this one was SWAC (the Bureau of Standards Western Auto- matic Computer). These computers, which were popularly called “giant brains”, had been in- vented during the Sec-

Constance Reid, left, and her sister Julia Robinson in 1979.

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fashion: a mixture of number theory, history, and end result was that Julia involved herself dur- what you might call numerology. Julia and ing the following half dozen years in the nitty- Raphael seemed to think that I could do that. gritty of Democratic Party politics: she regis- Later, though, when I got to the chapter on “9”, tered voters, stuffed envelopes, and rang which was to be about “casting out 9s” and other doorbells in neighborhoods where people ex- such checks, Raphael insisted that there should pected to be paid for their vote. She even served be some real mathematics in the book, so he ex- as Alan Cranston’s campaign manager for Con- plained congruences to me and the Law of Qua- tra Costa County when he successfully ran for dratic Reciprocity. state controller, his first political office. Well, that first book, From Zero to Infinity, was This political period of Julia’s life ended about something of a success: it has been in print now 1960 when, her physical condition having be- for forty-some years. One book led to another come much worse, she underwent major heart and another, and these I wrote more and more surgery. The surgery greatly improved her gen- on my own, although Julia and Raphael always eral health, although she still lacked the sta- read the finished manuscripts. mina of a normal person; and when she taught While I was writing these books, handling the a single class at Berkeley, as she frequently did, financial side of my husband’s law practice, rais- everything else had to be put on hold. ing my children, and working to improve the At this time, after writing three books ex- San Francisco public schools, Julia had become plaining mathematics to laymen, I felt that I had so absorbed in politics that she had virtually exhausted not mathematics, but the math- given up mathematics. ematics that I was capable of explaining. So I was You know that Julia was a solver of math- rather at loose ends in my writing. I wanted to ematical problems, but do you know that she put do something different. Well, after three popu- her mind to all sorts of other problems—rela- lar books about mathematics Julia had begun to tively small problems like how Marina Ratner’s think of me, not only as a writing asset, but as little daughter could learn English quickly and an asset to mathematics. One day she came enjoyably (Julia’s solution was to give her sto- across an obituary of some mathematician who ries about Nancy Drew) and larger problems of had recently died. She read it with interest and, the University of California (and it had plenty of remembering what E. T. Bell’s Men of Math- problems during those years), the Democratic ematics had meant to her when she was a col- Party, the United States, the world. lege student, she decided it would be good for I can give you an example of Julia’s non- students to be able to read about more modern mathematical problem solving on a major scale. mathematicians than those in Bell, mathemati- In 1952, when Adlai Stevenson was badly de- cians whose names were also attached to theo- feated by Eisenhower and the Democratic Party rems in their textbooks. was in what can best be described as disarray, Constance should update E. T. Bell. Julia was concerned about the fact that the in- To set this proposed project in the context tellectual grassroots support for Stevenson was of Julia’s mathematical career, I should say that separating itself from the Democratic Party and she and Martin Davis and Hilary Putnam had just from party politics. She decided that her sister published their joint paper, “The decision prob- Constance should convey her ideas in a letter to lem for exponential Diophantine equations”, but the editor of the New Republic, since in her view Julia was becoming somewhat discouraged about I could write and she could not. Well, this past her ideas on the subject. A year or so before, Sunday I went down to the library and looked up again at Asilomar, she had explained the Tenth that letter. There it was: a column and a third at Problem to me. By this time I had a little more the beginning of the Letters to the Editor column understanding than I had had when she ex- in the New Republic of January 26, 1953. It was plained her thesis. She had said to me then— odd to read it. The words were Constance Reid’s, which had impressed me greatly—that she did but the political passion was Julia Robinson’s! not care whether she solved the problem herself, The letter appeared just before an important she just had to know the answer, she would not meeting of Democratic Party leaders at Asilomar, want to die without knowing. to which interested citizens were also invited. At It was during this period that she came up Julia’s urging my husband and I went with her with the idea of my writing a collection of short and Raphael. We found to our amazement that biographies of modern mathematicians, and she all the bigwigs at the meeting were talking about spent a great many hours with me going through my letter and were asking, “Who is this Con- Math Reviews and making out three-by-five cards stance Reid?” I know people have sometimes for all the obituaries, memoirs, autobiographies, suspected that Constance Reid was really Julia and biographies of mathematicians that we could Robinson, and on this occasion it was so. I do find between the first issue in 1940 and the not remember exactly what happened, but the most recent one in 1964. I should mention that

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in 1964, although there were lots of obituaries, For my birthday she gave me the three vol- there were no full-length biographies. There umes of Hilbert’s collected works, and when her were two autobiographies, Norbert Wiener’s Ex- mathematical friends inquired about my quali- prodigy and G. H. Hardy’s A Mathematician’s fications for writing the life of Hilbert, she told Apology, which was somewhat autobiographical. them with a perfectly straight face that I was That was all. This situation has changed dra- reading all his papers. matically in the interim, as you know—if not in (Incidentally, I did read all the words in numbers, at least in percentages. Hilbert’s collected works—mathematicians of Well, Julia was very persistent, and I became those days wrote more in words than they write interested if not excited, so we decided to go to today—and Hilbert’s were quite enlightening in Europe, where I could absorb local color and in- regard to his ideas and feelings about math- terview some relatives of the mathematicians on ematics.) our list, all of whom had been born after the First Julia then suggested that I interview math- World War and had died. ematicians in the area who had actually known It happened that, at the time, Julia was au- Hilbert: Lewy, Pólya, Szegö, even Siegel, who was diting a class of Alfred Tarski’s in which the passing through Palo Alto on his way back to Ger- person who always arranged to sit next to her many. But I was hesitant about talking to real was a young Ph.D. from Göttingen, a probabal- mathematicians about writing about Hilbert— ist then, named Volker Strassen. She told him Julia and Raphael, OK; they were family, but that her sister was planning to write a book Carl Ludwig Siegel? I remember Julia’s saying about men and women of modern mathematics, slyly, “You’re afraid they will find out that you’re and Volker said that of course then we must a hoax, Constance”—which, of course, I was. come to Göttingen and when we came he would Now, even a quarter of century after the pub- show us around. lication of Hilbert and the other biographies that It was on that trip that I first realized the re- have followed, I still do not really understand spect in which Julia was held by other math- why Julia encouraged me as she did when I might have disgraced, certainly embarrassed, both her ematicians. and Raphael. Volker’s Ph.D. adviser, Konrad Jakobs, was I think that perhaps at least part of the ex- eager to entertain us— rather, to entertain Julia. planation lies in something Julia said to Olga It was clear that Volker had scored a coup with Taussky after Hilbert was published and was an his “Doktorvater” by bringing her to Göttingen. unexpected success among mathematicians. Olga (Incidentally, Julia told me later that it was her was complaining that there were other important paper on game theory, the only paper she ever things that she would have told me about her wrote on that subject, which so interested mathematical relationship to Hilbert if she had Jakobs.) Volker himself, whose wife was mo- known “that EVERYBODY was going to read the mentarily expecting their second child, told us book,” but many people had come in the past to that if the baby was a girl—in those days peo- talk to her about her days in Göttingen and then ple did not know before the event—he was going nothing had ever happened, so she had thought to name her Julia. The baby was born while we it would be the same with me. were still in Göttingen but turned out to be a boy, “Olga,” Julia said, “you should have known so Volker named him Tyko after Tycho Brahe, that the Bowman girls always finish what they which showed me the class Julia was in as far start.” as Volker was concerned. At that time Julia had not been a Bowman for The result of our visit to Göttingen, however, thirty years, and I had not been a Bowman for was that I abandoned the project of updating twenty; but I think that the strong sense our E. T. Bell and decided that I, who knew almost parents conveyed to us that being a Bowman was nothing about mathematics but what Julia and something special, although in actuality the Bow- Raphael had explained to me, would write a life mans were quite ordinary people, was at the of David Hilbert. foundation of Julia’s sense of herself, and of I should say here that Julia had not suggested course she knew it had rubbed off on me too. I that I write about Hilbert. I came to him on my might write as Constance Reid, but at bottom I own; Hilbert simply enchanted me as he had en- was Constance Bowman. chanted all the young mathematicians and physi- Well, after Hilbert I wrote a life of Richard cists who had flocked to study with him in Göt- Courant at the suggestion of K. O. Friedrichs, who tingen. But if you think Julia tried to discourage became my mathematical collaborator in that her mathematically untrained sister from writ- project. I can not say that Julia and Raphael ing the life of the greatest mathematician of the were exactly “miffed” to see me going off on my first half of the twentieth century, you did not own, but they did feel a little out of it, although know Julia. both of them read the manuscript.

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Naturally, after his retiring early so he could devote more of his I had written time to mathematics—that what she would re- Hilbert and ally like was to share a job with him, but I am Courant, and Julia sure she had never suggested this to anybody had become fa- in the Berkeley department. Certainly I had never mous, and Saun- heard anything about it nor, according to ders Mac Lane had Raphael, had he, but it is a kind of “Julia solu- proposed her for tion” to a problem.) membership in the Well, to go back, after she was elected to the National Academy Academy, the Berkeley mathematics department of Sciences, and Al- came up with the idea of offering her a full pro- fred Tarski and fessorship with the duty of teaching just one- Jerzy Neyman, who fourth time, which was just about exactly what were old and not she had been doing for a number of years. The well and who department seems to have been a little con- didn’t much care cerned about the appropriateness of such an for each other, had offer, because the chairman consulted Saunders both made the trip Mac Lane, who recently sent me a copy of his re- back to Washing- sponse: ton, DC, just so “In my opinion it would be eminently appro- that they would be priate that Dr. Robinson receive a professorial present to help ex- appointment, under such part-time arrangement plain the impor- as may be mutually agreeable,” Mac Lane wrote. Julia Robinson, 1982. tance of Julia’s “Her accomplishments in mathematical logic work, people and related topics are, in my considered opin- began to make what they always thought was an ion, outstanding and would justify her ap- original suggestion: why don’t you write a life of pointment as a Distinguished Service Professor, your sister? or its equivalent, at any leading American uni- The truth of the matter is that I never con- versity, but most appropriately at the University sidered doing so. of California at Berkeley.” I knew Julia and I knew myself, and neither As you know, Julia accepted Berkeley’s offer. of us would want our biographies written by But that was not the end. She was showered anyone. I did think, however, that Julia should with more and more honors. I can still hear her, let herself be interviewed for More Mathemati- telephoning me about some new award, saying, cal People, which I was helping to edit, because— almost in despair— anyway in mock despair— and this was a telling point—she had objected “Constance, what next?” in regard to the earlier book, Mathematical Peo- This may in fact have been when she was ple, that it had contained interviews with three asked if she was willing to have her name put women—me, Mina Rees, and Olga Taussky up as the unopposed candidate for president of Todd—people, not mathematicians, being the the American Mathematical Society. Raphael did operative word in the title—but only one of the not think that she should accept but should three was a research mathematician. save her energy for mathematics, as he would “Julia,” I said, “how can you object when you have done. He did not try to impose his view on yourself refused to be interviewed?” her; he simply stated his opinion. But when she She of course had no answer to that. consulted me, I said that I felt there was no way Well, after her election to the National Acad- she could not accept, and she agreed, not be- emy of Sciences in 1976—you have all heard, I cause it was my opinion, but because it was the am sure, the story about Julia’s being identified same as her own. It might be a long time before as “Professor Robinson’s wife” when the uni- another woman mathematician was offered the versity press office called the mathematics de- position. In fact, of course, it was almost ten partment to find out just who Julia Robinson years. was—Berkeley started to think how it could get I should tell you, however, that Raphael ac- this new academician into its stable. There was cepted Julia’s decision with grace, cooking and the problem that Julia because of her health, al- taking care of himself during her many absences. though it was much improved, did not want and So here my sister was, famous for her math- could not handle the rigors of a full professor- ematical work and famous for her “firsts”, stead- ship. fastly refusing to be written about. “Dear So and (Incidentally, Julia once told Cathleen So,” she wrote to someone who wanted to include Morawetz—this must have been in the early her in a book about women scientists, “I am of 1970s when she and Raphael began to talk about course very flattered to be considered for your

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book, but I must ask you not to write about me. is indeed negative and whose friendship and I am appalled at the prospect of details of my collaboration over the barriers of age, sex, ge- life and beliefs appearing in print. (I don’t even ography, and the cold war were so satisfying to want to be written about after I’m dead but that her during the last years of her life. is difficult to manage.) This has nothing to do I worked very hard on the “autobiography”, with your abilities and qualifications, as I will knowing I was working against time, and each continue in the future to discourage any ac- day read what I had written to Julia, who was count of my life.” back in the hospital. She listened attentively, In her view a mathematician was his or her making suggestions or deletions. Today when I work; personality/personal details could do reread the “autobiography”, I feel that I am read- nothing to illuminate that and so were of no im- ing something that Julia herself wrote. It is an portance. She detested what she saw as the cult eerie sensation. of personality: the prying into every aspect of “The Autobiography of Julia Robinson” was what was private that was and still is prevalent published in the College Mathematics Journal in in biographical—and, for that matter, autobio- 1986 and reprinted in More Mathematical Peo- graphical—writing. ple in 1990. I felt that I had done all that was Although I felt very much the same, I thought needed. Then, at the beginning of 1995, Raphael that her position in relation to any writing about Robinson died, and I became the executor of his her life and views was logically untenable. She, estate. Since he had not disposed of Julia’s pa- however, stubbornly maintained that position pers, photographs, and memorabilia when she until it was clear to her and to me that she was died ten years earlier, I became her executor as going to die. well. This was the last service I was called upon Then I brought forth my most telling argu- to perform for my sister, a sort of closure of our ment. Given her achievements, somebody was “somewhat mathematical” relationship. bound to write a biography of her. How much I knew very well Julia’s feelings about pri- better if her sister wrote it and she herself had vacy, and I tried to observe them in making de- the opportunity to approve it! She finally agreed. cisions. I gave her mathematical letters to the On June 30, 1985—as it turned out, just thirty Bancroft Library with the proviso that nothing days before she died—we had an interview about personal was to be quoted without my permis- what she recalled as significant about her life. sion. I cooperated with the American Math- She was lying on the couch in her living room ematical Society in its wish to publish her col- and Raphael was present, although he never lected papers along with the very fine memoir said a word or even made a sound, except to Solomon Feferman had written for the National agree with a chuckle that Julia was indeed very Academy of Sciences. But after I had disposed stubborn. of the mathematical correspondence and the Almost immediately I got the idea of writing mathematical papers, there were still many pho- her life, in imitation of Gertrude Stein, as “The tographs and much memorabilia. I could not Autobiography of Julia Robinson”. I think this help wishing that I had had these to illustrate was because Julia had told me at this time how the “autobiography”, particularly those that were struck she had been by something Kay Boyle had relevant, although not technically mathemati- written to the effect that the only reason for writ- cal, to Julia’s mathematical career. It seemed ing one’s autobiography was to give credit where that something more about Julia was wanted: a credit was due. There were people to whom Julia book that could be placed in the hands, not only very much wanted to give credit. Beyond our par- of professional mathematicians, but of math- ents and others from her early days, these were ematics teachers and students and even non- all men. A young assistant professor at San mathematicians. My first thought was perhaps Diego State College who, in opposition to the the “autobiography” should be reprinted in a lit- head of his department, told her to go and to tle book of its own and expanded with some of go to Berkeley. Her husband, Raphael Robinson, the illustrative material that I had found among of whom she said that she did not think she Julia’s things, yet never going beyond the con- would have become a mathematician if it had not tent of the “autobiography”, which was all she been for him. Alfred Tarski, her thesis adviser, had wanted to leave as a record of her life. But whose mathematics was so completely right for then I felt that the book should include as well Julia that it is hard to imagine her career if he something about Julia’s mathematical work that had not come to Berkeley when he did. Jerzy Ney- gave a sense of the character of her thought and man, who by providing financial support made the personal warmth that she brought to col- it possible for her to continue graduate study laboration. So I asked Lisl Gaal, Martin Davis, and at Berkeley after she got her A.B. Yuri Matijase- Yuri Matijasevich for permission to reprint ar- vich, who provided the last thing that was needed ticles they had written earlier that had been pub- to prove that the solution of the Tenth Problem lished in widely separated places. The result of

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our “collaboration”, the book Julia, a life in math- ematics, is being published by the Mathematical Association of America. I do not feel that I want to profit from these books about Julia, so I am donating my share of the royalties from the collected works and all the royalties from Julia to the San Diego High School Foundation to fund a Julia Bowman Robinson Prize at the high school where, after the sopho- more year, she was the only girl taking math- ematics. The prize is not gender-designated. It is simply to go to the best mathematics student in the graduating class. Last year it happened that it went to a young man and this year to a young woman; and I understand from their teacher, a remarkable and dedicated woman, that the ratio of females to males in the advanced mathemat- ics class is now 50:50. Julia firmly believed that there is no reason that women cannot be mathematicians, and she just as firmly believed that there should be af- firmative action to bring women onto math- ematical faculties at colleges and universities. “If we do not change anything,” she said to me in that last interview, “then nothing will change.” She did not expect the ratio to be 50:50, but she felt that affirmative action should continue until male mathematicians no longer considered the presence of female mathematicians to be un- usual. Julia thought of mathematicians—these were her words once to a group of young people—“as forming a nation of our own without distinctions of geographical origins, race, creed, sex, age, or even time (the mathematicians of the past and you of the future are our colleagues too)—all ded- icated to the most beautiful of the arts and sci- ences.” As the nonmathematical sister of the math- ematician Julia Robinson, I would like to close with that thought.

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