34 Nancy, Cybernetics, Paris, and After

In the summer of 1946 there was to take place a private mathematical conference on harmonic analysis in France, at the University of Nancy. I was invited to participate. As a matter of fact, much of the meeting was to deal with my ideas. I traveled to England on a Dutch boat, and before taking part in the meeting I made my usual visit to England and my English friends. I visited University College, London, where J. B. S. Haldane was teaching. He had been divorced from his first wife, and he was now married to a brilliant young geneticist who had been his assistant during the war in physiological experiments they had made concerning the effect on various gases under high pressure.