George Adams Kaufmann

George Adams Kaufmann, (8 February 1894, Marijampolė Eastern Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – 30 March 1963, Edgbaston by Birmingham, UK) was a British mathematician, translator and anthroposophist. He travelled widely, spoke several languages and translated many of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures consecutively into English. Through his studies in theoretical physics he contributed much to the expansion and development of the natural sciences as extended by the concepts of anthroposophy.[1]

Youth

George Adam’s father, Georg von Kaufmann, a British national of German descent, was a pioneer of the oil industry. His mother was born Adams in England. Shortly after the George’s birth, the family moved to Solotwina in the foothills of the Carpathians. In 1897, when he was three years old, his parents separated and his mother was obliged to return to England alone, leaving her three children behind her. It was only in the 1930’s, a short while before her death, that Adams saw her again.

The father married again – a young German woman, who created for George and his siblings a happy childhood with many intensive experiences in their natural surroundings. Educated by English governesses, he was raised to fluency in several languages, primarily English, German and Polish. From 1905, Adams began to attend the Mill Hill School in England, travelling home alone to his family in Galicia. In 1912 he entered Christ's College, Cambridge majoring in chemistry and completing his B.A. in 1915.

Deeply preoccupied with problems of social reform, he rejected all manner of violence, remaining a pacifist throughout the First World War – a “militant revolutionary” as he described himself. Twice he did time as a conscientious objector and was only released after undergoing a hunger strike. The atomistic and materialistic thoughts of his time failed to satisfy him, causing him to seek for alternatives in the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russel. On questioning Russel on how to reach satisfactory conclusions in theoretical physics without the hypothesis of the atom, Russel encouraged him to study projective geometry. Following this advice, Adams began to concern himself primarily with mathematics and theoretical physics. He heard lectures by G. H. Hardy and began to research projective, non-Euclidean Geometry. In 1918 he brought his studies to an end as Magister Artium Cantabrigiensis.

Encounter with anthroposophy

In 1914 he had encountered Rudolf Steiner’s “Occult Science” and become a member of the Emerson Group in London in 1916. During his time as conscientious objector he had come to know Mary Fox, who belonged to the Quaker community. In 1920 the two got married.

His keen interest in Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on social reform and his intention to translate the book “The Threefold Social Order” (GA 23) caused him to visit Steiner together with Ethel Wegewood in Dornach. Steiner advised him in a number of conversations to become involved in some form of social work, something Adams could readily accept amid the social collapse in Central and Eastern Europe following the war. He went on several journeys to Poland as part of the English and American Quaker organization.

In 1920 he took part in the inauguration of the first Goetheanum building. On his return to England, he cooperated with some friends on spreading the ideas of Social threefolding as well as the anthroposophical ideas of Rudolf Steiner. His wife Mary began her work as librarian and translator for the Anthroposophical Society in London that she was to carry for many years. In addition, Adams was the free verbal translator of around 110 lectures of Rudolf Steiner’s into English, a task warmly acknowledged by Rudolf Steiner that he appears to have mastered brilliantly with his profound knowledge of both languages.[2] He went on to translate many of Rudolf Steiner’s written works, often together with Mary Adams.

He was often in Dornach during these times and so experienced the burning of the first Goetheanum on New Year’s Eve 1922/23 and was part of the Christmas Foundation meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1923/24. As of 1924 he became one of the Goetheanum-Speakers authorized by Rudolf Steiner.

Research and work

While working as a free co-worker of the Anthroposophical Society in Britain as lecturer and workshop holder after 1925, Adams turned once again to the study of the natural sciences and mathematics, concentrating particularly on projective geometry and working together with Elisabeth Vreede, leader of the Section for Mathematics and Astronomy at the Goetheanum. At the beginning of the 1930s, Adams published a series of articles and essays about projective, synthetic geometry and its relationship to physics, to Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis and to anthroposophical spiritual science, particularly the pioneering work Of Etheric Space in the magazine “Natura” of the Goetheanum’s Medical Section. Here for the first time is mentioned the concept of “counter-space”, as Rudolf Steiner indicated in the third of his courses on the Natural Sciences (GA 323), explained by means of non-Euclidean geometry. Some years later Louis Locher was to discover the same thing quite independently of George Adams. From that time on the conceptual development of the idea of counter-space in its relation of our normal spatial thinking became the focal point of Adams further scientific research. In 1933 the comprehensive work “Space and the Light of the Creation – Synthetic Geometry in the light of Spiritual Science” appeared, which was less a textbook of projective geometry than an overview of the spiritual scientific meaning of synthetic geometry.

When Elisabeth Vreede and Ita Wegman were dismissed from the Executive of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, a number of other prominent members of the German, Dutch and British Societies were expelled, including George Adams. This brought to an end his cooperation with the Mathematical/Astronomical Section. When the Chairman of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, D. N. Dunlop, died in May 1935, George Adams took over as General Secretary. In this task, Olive Wicher became his closest co-worker, and as time went on, he introduced her to projective Geometry as well.

Wartime years

At the outbreak of WW II, Adams volunteered and was stationed as interpreter in a prisoner of war camp. His close ties to Germany were soon to be the subject of an investigation, whereupon he was dismissed after 6 months of military service. He changed his name at this point from George Kaufmann to George Adams, taking on the maiden name of his mother. In the following years Adams was one of the monitors of the Polish broadcasting corporation in the service of the BBC and was assigned to Air Defense. He learnt several additional Slavic languages at this time. Much of his free time was spent in the British Library studying the development of modern mathematical sciences in order to penetrate and augment them with his thoughts about counter-space.

After the war in 1945, he was given a scholarship by the British Anthroposophical Society at Rudolf Steiner House in order to investigate together with Olive Wicher the geometric principles underlying the world of plants. In the spring of 1947, he discovered something of great import: It had been unclear up to that time, where the corresponding projective counterpart of the infinite plane of Euclidean space, the infinite midpoint of the non-Euclidean space (called by Locher the “absolute midpoint”) was to be found in the plant world. Adams expressed the idea that such a midpoint did not just exist, but that there was one to be found in every bud. This idea was connected with that of the lemniscatory correlation between space and counter-space and further researched by Olive Wicher and himself. In 1949 and 1952, two books appeared in English with the titles: The “Living Plant and the Science of Physical and Ethereal Space” and “The Plant between Sun and Earth”.

The Goethean Science Institute

In 1947, at the request of his friends Fried Geuter and Michael Wilson of Sunfield Homes in Clent near Birmingham, Olive Wicher and he moved to Clent, where they founded the “Goethean Science Foundation” together with Michael Wilson for the purpose of undertaking scientific research. The peaceful countryside together with a secure financial base provided an ideal environment for the fruitful years of work that followed.

Shortly before this, in 1946, Adams had taken up contact on his own initiative with the Goetheanum and its Mathematical-Astronomical Section under the provisional guidance of Louis Locher. He wished, despite deep-going human differences to work together on common issues. He once again participated actively in many conferences and discussions at the Goetheanum and in Germany. He also took up contact again with Georg Unger, who went on to found the “Mathematisch-Physicalisches Institut” in 1956, where Adams reported regularly on his work. Unger too, visited Adams and the others in Clent for common research gatherings.

Collaboration with Unger, Leroi and Schwenk

That was when Adams began his research on Rigid body statics and dynamics in Mechanics from the point of view of space and counter-space on the basis of projective linear geometry. The results were published in the late 1950s in the magazine “Mathematisch-Physikalische Korrespondenz” edited by Unger and appeared in book form in 1996. Based on the groundwork done by a number of mathematicians like Felix Klein, Arthur Cayley, William K. Clifford and Eduard Study, Adams pursued the idea of counter-space right into the concrete details of rigid body statics and dynamics (in non-Euclidean spaces). Peter Gschwind was able to build on this research and lead it into the sphere of Quantum physics.

Adams and Unger also began to collaborate with Alexandre Leroi and Theodor Schwenk, leading to the establishment of the “Instituts für Strömungsforschung“ in Herrischried in the Black Forest. During the last years of his life, Adams expended a lot of his energy on this project, desiring to test the efficacy of his ideas on space and counter-space into the realm of technology. He worked out specific planes (W-planes) and together with John Wilkes built models for the self-purification and re-enlivening of water through special forms. He often worked in Herrischried together with Olive Wicher, following with interest the research of Leroi and Schwenk.

After a light stroke in August 1959, Adams divided his time between the Black Forest and England devoting much time besides to the translation of some works of Rudolf Steiner.

He is reported to have combined in himself several polarities in character. On the one hand multilingual and worldly, he tended on the other to be shy and strangely innocent; a clear thinker schooled in mathematics, chemistry and physics, his relationship to nature was rather more introspective and religious; a political revolutionary, he allowed himself to be incarcerated for his convictions, while in his relationships he showed extreme modesty, humour and never allowed his vast knowledge to become overbearing.

Books

With Olive Whicher

Further reading

Locations of estate and archives

References