Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn

Ever since 1995, I have exchanged numerous e-mail messages – and sometimes letters – with the Dutch mathematician N. G. de Bruijn. His elegant humor, openness in expressing views even on controversial issues, his eyewitness accounts of post-World War II events in Holland made this correspondence fascinating and enjoyable for me. We also shared interest in finding out who created the conjecture on monochromatic arithmetic progressions, which was proved by B. L. van der Waerden (see the rigorously argued answer later in this book). Yet, for years, I have been asking Professor de Bruijn to share with me his autobiography to no avail. For a long while, I did not even know what “N. G.” stood for. On October 29, 2005, I tried to be a bit more specific in my e-mail. I wrote: