Oswald Veblen

“In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Veblen carried out three extraordinary initiatives. He helped to create the original {{w|Princeton University Department of Mathematics#History|Fine Hall—what is today Jones Hall—as the first home for Princeton’s Department of Mathematics}}. He influenced {{w|Abraham Flexner}}’s decision to locate the {{w|Institute for Advanced Study}} in Princeton rather than Newark. And he became a founding member of the {{w|Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars}}, which brought hundreds of refugees to Princeton and other universities.”

“The importance of the theory of {{w|differential invariant}}s in physical problems is due to the fact that when coordinates are used to describe physical phenomena (e.g. those studied in geometry) it is usually the case that the coordinates are no part of the phenomena themselves. They are generally put into the description by the observer. Therefore it is desirable to have the description in such terms that when stated in terms of one coordinate system, it can be read off easily in terms of other systems. Such statements will employ invariants of one sort or another.”