Actually, Yes I Did!

This is ME writing some results and a hypothesis of Georg Cantor's

 IN  .  .  .  HIS  .  .  .  FORMER  .  .  .  CLASSROOM!!!

<pausing here for effect>

My department, my dean, and the sabbatical committee have been absolutely supportive of my explorations this semester.  As I reflect on my experiences today, however, I remember one comment the chair of the sabbatical committee made to me before my trip.  It wasn't negative; I think he was just trying to let me down easy.  I had put together a very ambitious proposal in which I stated that, among other things, I was going to truly walk where the mathematicians walked - that at Cambridge I was going to find the rooms that Hardy lived in - that near Lincoln I was going to see the apple tree that inspired Newton - that I was going to enter the actual classrooms where the great mathematicians taught -

The comment was gently made to me that I probably wouldn't be able to quite accompish the things I had proposed.  The committee approved my proposal (obviously), but evidently there was a sense, at least on the part of the chairman, that though I would certainly do much of what I'd proposed and that it would be valuable to our college community, that I couldn't actually do ALL of it.

Well, guess what?

These things that were seen to be (perhaps) impossible - I've done them!

Here I am at the front of the classroom where the phenomenal mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) taught.  Yes, it's been refurbished, but he taught in THIS room, that exists inside THIS classroom building -

 - just up THESE stairs, through the next doorway, first door on your left.

Here's the teacher's-eye view of the classroom, and that's my contact here (and now my friend) Dr. Manfred Stern standing on the left.  He is very knowledgeable about Cantor and has just rolled out the red carpet for me and has helped me to access all things Cantor-related.

This classroom is in Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (which I had always just known as Halle University).  Here is the quad of the university main campus with the classroom building on the left and the main hall or "aula" of the university on the right up the stairs.

Central area of the aula

Lion in front of the aula

After my little bit of board work he stepped up to the board, and we had a discussion about mathematical notation in the U.S. and Germany - similarities and differences -

Dr. Stern, by the way, regularly taught in this classroom!

I STOOD TODAY WHERE CANTOR STOOD!

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? 
ACCOMPLISHED!!