Page "Stanislaw Ulam" Paragraph 18

In September 1945, Ulam left Los Alamos to become an associate professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In January 1946, he suffered an acute attack of encephalitis, which put his life in danger, but which was alleviated by emergency brain surgery.

During his recuperation, many friends visited, including Nicholas Metropolis from Los Alamos and the famous mathematician Paul Erdős, who remarked: " Stan, you are just like before.

" This was encouraging, because Ulam was concerned about the state of his mental faculties, for he had lost the ability to speak during the crisis.

Much later, after Ulam's death, another friend, Gian-Carlo Rota, asserted that the attack did change Ulam's personality ; afterwards, he turned from rigorous pure mathematics to more speculative conjectures concerning the application of mathematics to physics and biology.

However, this suggestion was not accepted by Françoise Ulam.