Benjamin Baumslag on Karl Gruenberg


Benjamin Baumslag writes:-

I have written a brief rhyme to commemorate Karl. It is deliberately written in a light-hearted fashion but still in some ways gives a picture of him. Karl would not have objected, he had a sense of humour and a very engaging smile:
Yes we remember Karl well,
He was what you could call swell,
He was a man who had incredible drive,
On every maths problem he would thrive,
To the blackboard and in his eye a gleam
To write rapidly ream after ream,
As others coped with a denominator,
So he quickly demolished a commutator,
I do not know what he knew about geology,
But nobody could match him in cohomology,
And then he also did another thing worthy,
He studied and researched on Number Theory,
Emanating energy and many a mega erg,
There was nothing that could stop Karl Gruenberg,
Yes we remember Karl well,
He was indeed rather swell.

Last Updated January 2015