BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA 



gage for life ; for Kluyver was not only a very gifted man with an ex- 

 ceptional intelligence and insatiable curiosity, he was also a wise man. 



What is wisdom? 'Wisdom is a native gift of intuition, ripened and 

 given application by experience, for understanding the nature of 

 things, certainly of living things, most certainly of the human heart'. 

 These are the words of T. S. Eliot, spoken when he received the 

 Hanseatic Goethe prize for 1954. But I can also illustrate, by some 

 eminently practical examples, what Kluyver's wisdom implied. 



He never rebuked ; he never told any one off, as so many of us are 

 apt to do. He never became irate; during those fifty years I have 

 never seen him angry. He was a wise man. 



This he was also to his students and pupils. His wisdom towards 

 them included also the recognition that not all persons are alike, that 

 not every one was as he; and he not merely tolerated, but actually 

 encouraged different personalities. There was but one human trait he 

 disliked: pretentiousness, would-be learning, hypocrisy, insincerity. 



Is it surprising that he was venerated by his pupils, and that, when 

 he had been professor for 25 years and declined a grand celebration, 

 his pupils gave him a dinner party at which they toasted him so pro- 

 fusely and so touchingly? 



Kluyver was also a man of style. Has not Buffon said that 'Gar le 

 style, c'est de l'homme meme'? This was a most essential element of his 

 character. He was a man of decorum, and he despised vulgarity. 



His feeling for style was also expressed in his brilliant lectures on his 

 specialty and related matters. Yet one should not think that it came to 

 him easily, by some sort of intuition. It was achieved through hard 

 work, by revising, by pondering every single word. 



In his conversation, too, he was original and singular. His diction 

 was intensely personal, sometimes spiced with expressions that had 

 their origin in the district where his father and mother had been born, 

 and where his grandfather had owned a mill. 



He liked slogans, which he replaced by new ones every few years. 

 During the 'thirties, when he was exceptionally busy, I remember 

 that the favorite one was: 'This is a great and terrible world'. But in 

 his later years he had become more resigned, and was wont to say: 

 'Well, that's how it is'. 



His conversation was brilliant in another respect. In a few words 

 he could outline a situation, either in science or in politics. He often 



160 



