Tea for two, and two plus two for tea

Every weekday at 3:30 p.m., dozens of math professors and graduate students gather in the Common Room on the third floor of Fine Hall. Over tea, cookies and coffee, they chat about the latest problems they're tackling and they scribble animatedly on the blackboard. After half an hour, the mathematicians begin to filter out and head back to their offices. The room is deserted by 4:15.

This daily gathering is rooted in decades of tradition. Since its inception in the 1930s, afternoon tea at the math department has been frequented by the brightest minds in the world.

The custom was inspired by similar practices at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. "It's an English tradition to serve afternoon tea and cookies," math professor Robert Gunning GS '55 explained.

The practice was adopted at the University by Oswald Veblen, a professor in the math department in the early 1900s who placed great importance on facilitating the exchange of ideas.

Veblen, who largely designed the original Fine Hall — now Jones Hall — said he wanted it to be a place where "the young recruit and the old campaigner" could have "those informal and easy contacts that are so important to each of them," according to Alexander Leitch's "A Princeton Companion."

Veblen would regularly hold small gatherings in his office in Palmer Laboratory — renovated as Frist Campus Center in 2000 — by preparing tea with a Bunsen burner. He decided to make the event a more formal practice.

"He wanted to provide a mechanism for getting faculty and students together on regular basis," Gunning said, "so he set up a daily afternoon tea."

In 1931, Veblen called Albert Tucker GS '32 into his office and appointed him chairman of the tea committee.

"I tried to get out of it by saying that I did not particularly care for tea," Tucker recalled in a 1984 interview for the University's oral history project "Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s."

" 'Well,' [Veblen] said, 'have coffee or cocoa or whatever you like, but you are in charge,' " Tucker said.

Tucker was instructed to make arrangements for tea to be served every weekday from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the Common Room. He set up a system in which each day, two graduate students were responsible for making all of the preparations for tea, and two others would clean up afterwards.

"But there was a certain amount of slackness. People did not do their jobs very well or did not show up," Tucker said. "I had to direct all this, including deciding on how many cookies to order . . . It was quite an enterprise."

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At the end of the year, it was decided that the serving of the tea should be left up to the janitor. He stayed two extra hours every weekday to serve and clean up after tea, paid by research funds "because the social atmosphere of the afternoon tea facilitated research," Tucker said.

The event proved to be popular from the start, with almost all of the graduate students and many faculty members attending regularly.

"Going to tea was just something that everybody did," Tucker said. "They might only be there for a few minutes. If you wanted to arrange to see somebody on an informal basis, you simply said, 'See you at tea.' "

During the teas, which were also attended by members of the physics department from the adjacent Palmer Laboratory, faculty and students often played chess, Go, backgammon and other games.

"There was a certain problem then because many of the grad students were low in funds. They might try to make an evening meal of the cookies," Tucker explained. "So there had to be a little bit of policing there: There was a quota on the number of cookies that could disappear."

That much, at least, has not changed. "It's wise, if you come, to come earlier," Gunning said, "because student appetites — let alone faculty appetites — are such that there aren't many cookies left for long."

When the math department moved into the current Fine Hall in the 1970s, afternoon teas moved along with it, but "the ghost of the tradition lingers in Jones," Gunning said.

Professor Joseph Kohn GS '56 said when he first came to the University as a graduate student, "The tea was a little different. In those days, everybody was playing games of different sorts . . . and it was somewhat fancier."

Kohn has taught at the University since 1968, now attending tea two or three times a week, and said the original atmosphere has changed.

"Now, there isn't real time for tea, with the seminar schedule," he added. "It's just sort of jammed in there."

Today, tea is served by a hired "tea lady" whose sole responsibility is to prepare the daily event and clean up afterwards. The current tea lady, Zdena Gierich, has been at her job for several years. She comes in at 1:30 p.m. to make several pots of coffee and hot water.

Before faculty and students arrive, she arranges a selection of cookies and tea bags alongside the coffee.

Erma Dinardo, who has worked in the math department office for 15 years, places the orders for the tea.

"It's a nice break for them," Dinardo said. "They come down, get a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, and just chat."

Often someone will put a problem on the blackboard and colleagues will gather to discuss it, she said.

"It's extremely helpful because you get to talk to others on an informal basis, not structured like other seminars," Kohn said. "Students can talk to teachers and relax with each other, and it gives you a break at the end of the day."

He described the conversation at afternoon tea as "a combination of intellectual discussion and gossip."

Seminars by visiting lecturers are arranged to follow or precede tea, and on those days as many as 60 to 70 attend. On those occasions, Dinardo said, special teas are sometimes brought in.

Since its inception, afternoon tea has been a favorite tradition of the graduate students and faculty who have occupied Fine Hall throughout the years. World-renowned mathematicians including John von Neumann attended the teas along with their students.

John Nash GS '50 and other graduate students were regulars, Sylvia Nasar wrote in "A Beautiful Mind."

"They were absolutely required to come to tea every afternoon. Where else would they meet the finest mathematics faculty in the world?" she wrote.

Five decades later, Nash still occasionally attends the afternoon teas — though he can now count himself among the distinguished faculty.

Richard Feynman GS '42, a two-time Nobel Prizewinning physicist, also described afternoon teas he attended as a physics graduate student in his famous autobiography, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman."

Now, physicists have their own tea every day in Jadwin Hall, and another is held in the Fuld building of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Gunning said that the custom has spread to other universities across the country. "It has become a reasonably standard tradition in math departments," he said. "People come, exchange ideas, play games, eat and drink."