Because of this, Polya could only return to his home country many years after the end of the war. Having taken Swiss citizenship, Polya then married a Swiss girl, Stella Vera Weber, the daughter of a physics professor. He returned to Hungary only in 1967.
George Polya's professional life was as interesting as his personal pursuits. Before accepting an offer for an appointment in Frankfurt, Polya took time to travel to Paris in 1914, where he once again came into contact with a wide range of mathematicians.
Hurwitz influenced him greatly, and also held the chair of mathematics at the Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule Zurich. This mathematician arranged an appointment as Privatdozent for Polya at this institution, which the latter then accepted in favor of the Frankfurt appointment.
In addition to his teaching duties, Polya further pursued his passion for mathematics via his research efforts. He collaborated with Szego in order to assemble a collection of problems for his book on analysis. In this book, Polya explained a new approach to mathematical ideas and problem solving: rather than focusing on the subject of a problem, he focused instead on its method of solution. Polya and Szego's two-volume work, Aufgaben und Lehrs tze aus der Analysis, appeared in 1925.
While working on this book, Polya was promoted to extraordinary professor in Zurich in 1920. The Rockefeller Fellowship that he received in 1924 financed his studies with Hardy in England, where he spent an amount of time at Cambridge and worked with Hardy and Littlewood. Here he began another collaboration that resulted in the book, Inequalities, which was published in 1934. Other publications include a total of 31 papers during the years 1926-28. Polya's obviously distinguished work gained him a further promotion to Ordinary Professor in 1928.
Another Rockefeller Fellowship in 1933 allowed Polya to visit Princeton. During this time, he also traveled to Stanford, and spent time with Blichfledt. After a very enjoyable time, Polya returned to Zurich, but was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1940, because...
In the United States, he worked at Brown University for two years. After a further time at Smith College, Polya took an appointment at Stanford. Here Polya's third book, How to solve it, sold over one million copies and was translated into 17 languages. Further books that Polya published include Mathematics and plausible reasoning (1954), and Mathematical discovery, in two volumes (1962, 1965).
In addition to mathematics, Polya also made significant contributions to teaching. For Polya, the highest aim of teaching is to let children discover knowledge and solutions for themselves. He furthermore holds that teaching is an art rather than a science, and should be treated as such. Having been influenced by his own experiences of teachers and teaching, Polya used what he felt worked best and incorporated it in his own philosophy of teaching. It appears that he used his own formidable problem-solving abilities to apply to the teaching profession. His frustration with memorizing and poor teaching methods when he was a young child played a large role in this.
While Polya retired in 1953 from his position at Stanford, he continued actively pursuing mathematics, and particularly teaching in this field. His association with Stanford also continued as Professor Emeritus. He not only pursued his mathematics career beyond his retirement, but also teaching: He taught a course on combinatorics at Stanford during 1978. After an active life and career, George Polya died on September 7, 1985 in Palo Alto. He was 97 years old. He remained active even during the last years of his life; although his eyesight failed towards the end, he still managed to read and answer all correspondence personally.
Sources
Motter, a. "George Polya, 1887-1985. http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/polya.html
O'Connor, J.J. And Robertson, E.F. "George Polya." 2002. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Polya.html
Polya Math Center. "George Polya, a Short Biography." University of Idaho, 2005. http://www.sci.uidaho.edu/polya/biography.htm
