1. Interview with David G. Kendall, Cambridge, Churchill College, 1991
Short forms: DGK= Professor David G. Kendall
Interviewer: Professor Kendall, would you be as kind as to recollect your memories of my
Father, please.
DGK: All right. I am trying to recollect what I can of Alfred Rényi. I think, I saw him first in
1954, at the International Congress of Matematicians in Amsterdam, when he presented his
famous and considerable paper on conditional probability spaces. I can recall that the Scottish
matematician, Aitken was in the chair and Kolmogorov, the Soviet matematician was in the
audience. Alfred Rényi’s lecture was intensly interesting in his new approach but I do not
think I met Rényi personally on that occasion.In a sense we met at second hand in 1956 when
many Hungarian matematicians were coming to England. Paul Erdős came to our house in
Oxford with the young Hungarian matematician, Paul Zádor, who, I think was a pupil of
Rényi. He got admission to Balliol College two years later and 3 years later he became my
research student. I saw Paul Zádor in the audience, looking very well and prosperous,
remembering the happiness of those days. He visited Oxford and gave a very interesting
lecture there.The Edinburgh Mathematical Congress was the following occasion, where all
UK statisticians went and again Alfred Rényi was there but I can not recall meeting him that
time either. When we actually met was in 1963 at the Congress of Probability, held in
Tbilissi, the Soviet Union. This conference was in fact very hospitable, with lots of parties
and dinners in the evenings and that time Alfred Rényi and I were acquianted and soon made
friends. Perhaps as a result of this he travelled to Cambridge in 1964 with her daughter,
Susanna and he stayed at my College, Churchill College. Alfred also worked in the Statistical
Laboratory, gave us many talks and lectures and we got to know each other much better then.
I can remember we all went to the big summer ball together. Alfred looked particularly
splendid in his full evening clothes and he was happily dancing with his daughter. The same
summer I travelled to Prague for a week and then to Budapest for a week and from there to
the big Statistical Meeting, held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. At Budapest I remember the
hospitability of the Rényi family, who entertained me during my stay in Budapest. We went to
see together many historical monuments, among others the Roman amphitheater in Budapest,
on the south bank of the Danube. The journey to Belgrade was memorable. Originally I had
intended to travel by train but Alfred suggested that was a silly thing to do and he much
rather went by car and actually we did. For me it was quite a terrifying journey. The strategy
seemed to be to drive directly at any object coming opposite and at the last second divert
away quickly to the appropriate side. To my greatest surprise we arrived in Belgrade safely
and there we had a pleasant time. As I am dictating this I recollect some other memories in
Budapest. That occured as I went to give my lecture in the Mathematical Research Institute of
the Academy in Reáltanoda street. The audience was assembled, quite a large one, I had my
notes ready, everything was adjusted and I was just about to give my lecture when one of the
secretaries arrived, saying: Professor Rényi asks you to come immediately to his office as
Professor Paul Erdős has arrived. All right, I left my audience and went to Alfred’s office.
„Good, come in, sit down, we are going to have some coffee”, Alfred told. So, we were sitting
there for half an hour, having our coffee and chatting to Paul Erdős before I was allowed to
return to my patient audience and give my talk to them. I also remember trying to learn some
Hungarian words and on that occasion I thought quite successfully. Once we went on an
outing with Alfred to the countryside and I saw some wooden huts in the fields and the people
working there seemed to me saying „Matematikai Intézet”.(that is „Mathematical Institute). I
commented it to Alfred but he told me „no, it was just said: beware of the dog”, so at that
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2. point I gave up my efforts learning any more Hungarian.In the following years we met quite
frequently. (end of recording)
Interviewer’s notes:
1, Unfortunately, the recording of the second part of the interview was technically damaged,
that is why it can not be heard.
2, In the year of Rényi’s death Professor Kendall commemorated him in the Journal of
Applied Mathematics, No 7, 1970, entitled: „The Obituary of Alfred Rényi”
I myself often met the Kendall family in Cambridge in the years following the 1970-ies, they
often invited me to their home and he helped me in my research during my regular visits to
Cambridge, where I always stayed in Churchill College, which Professor Kendall liked to call
as „my college”.He often invited me to the „high table” dinners of the professorial staff, and
both his wife, Diana and he himself were especially kind and helpful with me. I saw him two
years before his death for the last time and I felt I lost a close friend in spite of the wide age
gap between us.
I can only tell his children how grateful I was for the hospitality of the Kendall family for
many decades, and I am really sorry we could not record the second part of the interview
again.
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