Josephine de Karman

In a short time, our home became a gemütlich meeting ground for a thousand ideas expressed, I must admit, at a high noise level in French, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, English, and of course German.

These sorties in internationalism were so successful that my sister suggested one day that we ought to do something to maintain regular contact with scientists in other countries ... because of the influence of our father who taught us to have a world view.

For one thing, she was blessed with a remarkable linguistic talent and not only spoke Hungarian, German, French, English, and Spanish fluently, but she had great facility in picking up new and strange tongues as well.

... My sister Pipö was fond of the movie colony and our guests included writers, producers and actors … Among other guests generally collected by my sister were spiritualists, magicians and other odd characters whom we found in great abundance in Southern California.When Enrico Fermi was visiting Pasadena, he asked Theodore whether it would be possible to visit a movie studio.

"Since my friends and those of my sister included a number of Hollywood personalities, notably the Hungarian actors Paul Lukas and Bela Lugosi, I had no difficulty arranging a luncheon for Fermi at the studios.

She knew with an uncanny instinct when to keep me free from interruption when I was immersed in scientific work, and when to open the gate to entertainment and gaiety.

Unable to fund the growing operations, the founders were pressured to sell their stock in the company: I continued to hold out for a number of months, but after some negotiation General Tire finally made a concession I could not resist.