“Between Worlds,” or an Imagined Reminiscence by Oskar Morgenstern about Equilibrium and Mathematics in the 1920s

Source abstract

“ Iwas born in 1902 in Görlitz, a small provincial town in Germany, and raised in Vienna, the great city of the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire. On my father's side, my family goes back to about 1530 in Saxony, my Lutheran forebears having been farmers, church wardens, judges, and businessmen. My mother was a natural daughter of Frederick III of Germany … ” Yet another account of myself, for yet another encyclopaedia. Italian, this time. Once again, I put pen to paper and collapse the events of fifty years ago to a few familiar milestones. Now what shall I tell these Italians? “ I finished the Gymnasium and took my Dr. Rer. Pol. at the University of Vienna in 1925. Awarded a Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship, I spent the next three years in England, the United States, France and Italy. Returning to Vienna, I soon became Docent, later Professor, at the University, and Director of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research … ” And then there will be the doctoral thesis, Wirtschaftsprognose , the other Institute, Princeton, and so on. It is remarkable really, the rehearsed inevitability of it all … So often have I gone through exercises of this kind that there are times when I even begin to believe them myself.