Von Neumann found himself at the center of a thriving mathematical community, assuming the role that Hilbert had played in the Göttingen of 1926. “I would come to Fine Hall in the morning and look for von Neumann’s huge car,” remembers Israel Halperin, a student in 1933, “and when it was there, in front of Palmer Lab, Fine Hall seemed to be lit up. There was something in there that you might run into that was worth the whole day. But if the car wasn’t there, then he wasn’t there and the building was dull and dead.”
