《博彩app推荐》讲述了Stanisław Ulam的故事, a critical figure in the development of the hydrogen bomb

在第三帝国的早期，一位年轻的数学家离开了他的祖国波兰, sails to the United States, and, within a decade, 加入了也许是20世纪最著名和最重要的思想家团队.

It’s the stuff movies are made of, one movie in particular, Adventures of a Mathematician (2020), which is screening at the Boulder Jewish Film Festival at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 13 in the Dairy Arts Center’s Gordon Gamm Theater.

Directed by Thor Klein (Lost Place, 2013), Adventures of a Mathematician tells the story of Stanisław (Stan) Ulam, 负责解决如何在氢弹中引发聚变问题的数学家.

Born in 1909 in Lwów, Poland (then Lemberg, Austria-Hungary), 乌拉姆表现出了他后来称之为“数学冲动”的早期迹象.” At the age of 12, for example, 同时学习爱因斯坦的狭义相对论，这样他就能更好地理解物理学和天文学, he realized that, as he says in an interview published in 1985, he “needed to learn some mathematics.”  

But he didn’t just learn some mathematics. He learned a lot of mathematics—much of it on his own. “16岁时，我真正从书上自学了微积分.”

乌拉姆继续在Lwów理工学院学习数学, eventually earning his PhD in 1933, the same year Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

希特勒的上台对像乌兰这样年轻的犹太学者来说是个不祥之兆. According to Norman Bentwich in his 2012 book The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars, Hitler’s government purged more than 1,仅德国大学就有200名犹太学者和科学家.

“In 1934, the international situation was becoming ominous,” Ulam says in his autobiography, also titled Adventures of a Mathematician.

“There were increasing displays of inflamed nationalism, extreme rightist outbreaks and anti-Semitic demonstrations. 我并没有意识到这些即将到来的预兆，但我模糊地感到，如果我要自己谋生，而不是无限期地继续由父亲抚养, I must go abroad.”

For the remainder of the 1930s, 乌拉姆在波兰度过了暑假，在美国度过了他的学业, during which time he made many valuable friends, 包括匈牙利裔美国数学家约翰·冯·诺伊曼, or as Ulam called him, “Johnny.1939年，他获得了自己的第一个半永久职位，在哈佛大学担任为期一年的讲师. He set sail for the East Coast, bringing with him his 17-year-old brother, Adam, as Europe was growing increasingly dangerous.

“Our father and uncle Szymon accompanied us to Gdynia, a Polish port on the Baltic Sea, to see us off on the Polish liner Batory,” Ulam writes. “This was the last time we were to see either of them.”

Eleven days later, at a hotel on Columbus Circle in New York City, Ulam received news that Germany had bombed Poland. The war had begun.

“我突然觉得我过去的生活好像落下了一扇窗帘，把它和我的未来割断了.”

The war weighed heavily on Ulam. He lost family to the Holocaust. In 1943, 在威斯康辛大学麦迪逊分校任教三年之后, he was becoming restless.

“I was not happy with teaching,” he says. “It seemed a waste of my time; I felt I could do more for the war effort.”

So he contacted his old friend Johnny, 他最近加入了一个秘密项目，地点在西南部的一个秘密地点. Though unsure what the work would entail, Ulam expressed an interest in it, and two weeks later, 他收到了一封由理论物理学家、未来的诺贝尔奖得主汉斯·贝特签名的信，邀请他参与“一个正在进行重要工作的未知项目”, 与恒星内部有关的物理学.”

The undisclosed location turned out to be Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the “important work” was the Manhattan Project.  

Ulam accepted the job. He was 34 years old. He and his wife, Françoise Aron Ulam, two months pregnant at the time, gathered their things and made for New Mexico.

克莱因的电影以乌拉姆在洛斯阿拉莫斯的经历为中心，探讨了在那里出现的道德困境.

凯瑟琳·伯恩海默，博尔德犹太电影节导演，著有 The Fifty Greatest Jewish Movies and The Fifty Funniest Films of All Time, first saw Adventures of a Mathematician last year as a juror for the Moscow Jewish Film Festival.

“I found it interesting,” she says. It deals with the personal stories of these men, often Jewish, who, despite being “very, very committed to defeating the Nazis, 他们的行为在道德和伦理上有冲突吗.”

One reason for the film’s draw, Bernheimer notes, 它既不是一部纪录片，也不仅仅是对乌拉姆众多成就的罗列.

“这是一部博彩app推荐一个处于国际危机中心的人的戏剧, 这是一个移民的故事，他与那些把他赶出欧洲、屠杀他的人民的势力作斗争，为他的第二故乡做出了独特的贡献. 这是他那个时代最重要、最杰出的数学家的个人生活故事,” she says.

Adventures of a Mathematician 正是伯恩海默喜欢在博尔德犹太电影节上分享的那种电影, in part because it doesn’t offer easy answers.

她说:“我总是试着寻找适合对话的电影。. She looks for films that “you can’t stop talking about,” films that “you argue about in the car all the way home.” Adventures of a Mathematician, she says, is one of those films.

After the war, 在1946年回到洛斯阿拉莫斯与冯·诺伊曼一起研究热核武器之前，乌拉姆曾在洛杉矶的南加州大学短暂工作过, Edward Teller, Nicholas Metropolis and Stan Frankel.

During the two decades following, while continuing his work at Los Alamos, Ulam held several visiting professorships, including at the University of Colorado Boulder, 1967年，他成为数学系的教授和系主任.

国家大气研究中心数据科学家和爵士音乐家David Fulker(数学' 66), 1971年，我和乌拉姆一起上了两节课，我对他的印象很好——不是一个在黑板上忙碌地乱涂乱画的古板讲师, face turned away, but as an open, personable raconteur who would lean against his desk, and sometimes sit cross-legged on top of it, looking his pupils in the eye.

富尔克说:“讲故事通常是他介绍一个复杂话题的方式. “他可能会告诉博彩平台推荐狄拉克函数之类的东西, 这可能与他认识保罗·狄拉克的故事混在一起.”

It was a teaching method Fulker relished. “Ulam was one of my favorite professors,” he says.

Ulam retired in 1975. 直到1984年去世，他的夏天都在科罗拉多州和洛斯阿拉莫斯度过，冬天则在佛罗里达州度过. 但他对数学的迷恋和对其深远影响的欣赏从未减弱, as he says in his autobiography:

“黑板上或纸上的几笔涂鸦如何改变了人类事务的进程，这对我来说仍然是一个无止境的惊喜来源。.”

《博彩app推荐》正在纽约大都会艺术中心的戈登·格姆剧院(Gordon Gamm Theater)放映 Boulder Jewish Film Festival on Nov. 13 at 3:30 p.m.