What could be of interest to a couple of astrophysicists? **Goettingen** The list of scientific and mathematical achievements that have come out of the ancient Goettingen university (founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover) is so astonishing that I think there has never been a rival to such a place. In case you don't believe me, check out this link. There are 42 Nobel Prize winners associated with Goettingen -- Max Planck, Gerhard Herzberg, Max Born, Otto Hahn, Wolfgang Pauli, Maria Goeppert-Mayer -- and many others who may not have won Nobel Prizes but who left their mark on the advancement of knowledge -- David Hilbert, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kurt Goedel, Emmy Noether -- so many learned men and women have spent time in Goettingen.
So off we went early in the morning. The drive was about the same distance as going from Kingston to Toronto and we had no problems. We were amazed by the giant wind turbines that dominated the landscape. There must have been thousands.
We really liked the city of Goettingen. Here are some scenes. It was spared much of the destruction that was felt elsewhere during WWII.
In the heart of the town is the "Goose Girl". Apparently, anyone who graduates from the university, by tradition, must kiss the Goose Girl. (By the way, the Goose Girl is the statue.)
We saw three lovely churches, the 1st one is St. Johannis:
The second we missed the name of:
The 3rd was St. Jacobi, and was playing organ music. It had an ancient and oddly grotesque statue inside. Just as interesting, this church was built on a traditional pilgrimage route to the Santiago de Compostela in Spain (this is for Bob and Marg!).
But where was the university in all this? A bit of a walk to the north finally found the university, but it was a bit disappointing, mainly because many of the buildings were quite modern (which is fine) and because the campus was dominated by humanities, theology, law and medicine. The sciences must have been moved off to the north campus which was farther than walking distance. Again, all this is fine, it's just that there was no indication as to what the older buildings might have housed some time ago. And nothing at all that we could see honouring the scientists and mathematicians who brought such esteem to the university (except for one statue of Leibniz, see below). Here are some scenes.
When we finally got to an area that had older university buildings, again, no sign of any plaques, signs or statues.
So we had lunch and went on to our next and final stop in Goettingen: the Stadtfriedhof Cemetery. Since we could find no sign which marked it, I had to take a picture of the bus stop that was nearby.
Now instead of showing you pictures of what we *should* have seen, I will provide a link instead, namely go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtfriedhof_(Göttingen) to see the graves of the great scientists. For our part, we got so lost and turned around in this gigantic tree-filled cemetery, and the directions and signs were so poor, that we just didn't find any of them. Richard's knees started to hurt, so we cut our cemetery excursion short. Well, at least it was quiet! Here are a couple of photos just to prove that we were there.
And so tomorrow we will attend to our own science and not think to much about final resting places. Bye for now.
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