Most people still went about on foot in Göttingen. The distances to be traversed inside the city were so short that it would have been hardly worth while to go by car or motorcycle. Not until after the First World War did students and professors adopt the bicycle and this was a novelty not popular with everyone. Was it not those leisurely strolls before and after lectures which had so often given rise to the most interesting ideas? Had not chance meetings at a straight corner or along the picturesque city wall often accomplished more than formal seminars or committee sessions?
-- Robert Jungk,
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1958), page 11
