how did life in city change polyas husband
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Biography
George Pólya's parents were Anna Deutsch and Jakab Pólya who were both Jewish. Anna was from a family who had lived for many generations in Buda, and she had been nineteen years old in 1872 when the towns of Buda, Obuda, and Pest had administratively merged to become the city of Budapest. Perhaps we should say a little about George Pólya's names, for the quite as it appears. In fact, although Jakab Pólya had the name "Pólya" when his son György (or George as he was later known) was born, he had only called himself Pólya for the five preceding years. Before that his name had been Jakab Pollák but, in order to understand why Jakab Pollák changed his name to Pólya, we need to look at both his career and at a little Hungarian history.
Jakab was trained as a lawyer, ran his own law firm which failed, and then worked for the international insurance company Assicurazioni Generali of Trieste. However what he really wanted was a university post in which he could conduct research into the subjects which really interested him, namely economics and statistics. After 1867 Hungary had gained full internal independence within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the political philosophy of the country was to move towards a Hungarian state that was both Magyar in spirit, and in its institutions. What better way for Jakab Pollák to improve his chances of a university post than to change his name from a Jewish sounding one to one which sounded really Hungarian. He did just that in 1882 and whether it contributed to his success in getting an appointment as a Privatdozent at the University of Budapest, one cannot say but he received such a post shortly before he died in his early fifties when George was ten years old.
In fact although George's parents were Jewish, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church shortly after his birth. How did this come about? Well Jakab, Anna, and their three children at the time, converted from the Jewish faith to the Roman Catholic faith in 1886, the year before George's birth.
When Jakab Pólya died in 1897 he left a wife, Anna aged 44 at the time, and five children. George had an older brother Jenö, who was 21 years old and studying medicine when his father died, two older sisters Ilona (10 years older than George) and Flóra (8 years older than George) who went to work for the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali to help support the family, and a younger brother Lásló (4 years younger than George). It is worth pointing out that Jenö, who loved mathematics and always regretted not having pursued that subject, is perhaps as well known to medical people as George is to mathematicians. However, it was Lásló who was considered the brightest of the children, but sadly he was killed in World War I before making a name for himself. Perhaps given how much effort his father had put in trying to enter the academic profession, it is slightly surprising that George's mother should press him to follow his father's profession of law but this is exactly what she did.
George attended elementary school in Budapest and received his certificate in 1894 which recorded (see for example [2]):-
... diligence and good behaviour.
Following this he entered the Dániel Berzsenyi Gymnasium studying the classical languages of Greek and Latin as well as the modern language of German and of course Hungarian. At school Pólya's favourite subjects were biology and literature and in this latter subject he received "outstanding" grades as he did in geography and other subjects. It is rather unusual that someone who went on to spend their life being so fascinated by so many different branches of mathematics should not have fallen in love with the subject at school but in Pólya's case this is exactly what happened. He did not score particularly high marks in mathematics at the Gymnasium, his work in geometry being graded as merely "satisfactory". He did score rather better in arithmetic, however. The reason for his lack of success in mathematics may well have been due to poor teaching, and he would later describe two of his three mathematics teachers at the gymnasium as "despicable teachers".
Pólya enrolled at the University of Budapest in 1905 supported financially by his brother Jenö who was by now a surgeon. He began to study law but found it so boring that he gave up that topic after one semester. He then studied his favourite school subjects of languages and literature for two years, gaining his certificate which allowed him to teach Latin and Hungarian in a gymnasium. It was a qualification of which he was proud but never put it to use. He then became very interested in philosophy but his professor, Bernát Alexander, advised him to take physics and mathematics courses to help him understand this subject, so eventually he was made to study mathematics. He made the witty remark, which should not be taken seriously [4]:-
I thought I am not good enough for physics and I am too good