THE ROMANCE OF A SENIOR WRANGLER.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 17 August 1908, Page 3

THE ROMANCE OF A SENIOR WRANGLER.

Two names were bracketed for Senior Wrangler in the announcement made in the University Senate House of the results of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. They were those 1 of Mr 'S. Brodetsky, of Trinity College, a Russian Jew, whose father lives in Mile End, and Mr A. W. Ibbotson, of Pembroke College, son of Mr R. Ibbotson, of Knowle, near Birmingham. 1 \Mr Ibbotson was born at Knowle, near Birmingham, ib. 1886, and received >his Ifirst training at Solihull Grammar School. "The success of Mr JBrodetsky furnishes a remarkable example of the possibilities open to the poorest boy in English elementary schools, for his father landed in this country practically penniless fifteen years ago," says the Mail. "Here is the story of how Selig Brodetsky climbed the educational ladder from the bottom to the topmost rung.

A Senior Wrangler would scarcely be looked for in a small, dismal East End street. Yet in su?h a place — No. 6, Cecil street, immediately opposite the Great Assembly Hall, in the Mile End' road — Selig Brodetsky has lived with his' parents since he first came to thia country fifteen yea*s ago. "Mr Brodetsky, senior, was sitting in t the small *front room on the ground floor at 6, Cecil street, receiving congratulations by,' the score yesterday afternoon.

" 'My son Selig,' he said, 'was born at Olyiopol, in the government of Kherson, # near Odessa, twenty years ago. I came to this country r sixteen years ago. I realised that, being a Jew, there were no possibilities open to me in Russia. I did my military duty (it was an easy one in my case, as I was an eldest son), and came here with a passport. A year afterwards— in 1893—1 sent for my wife and children; I have nine children altogether, the youngest being two years old. Selig undoubtedly inherits his remarkable faculties for mathematics from me, for as a boy I, was dubbed "the thinker," "the philosopher."

" 'There can be no doubt that if tho I Aliens Act had been in force when 1 ! came to this country I should not have been allowed in, for, although I had my passport and was not a refugee from justice, I had not the necessary £5. I cannot help thinking that a good many little Seligs have probably been .shut. out by the operation of that Act. " 'However, here I am. I haye become naturalised, and I have succeeded ■in bringing \up my fan-ily. I am, an ] itinerant haberdasher. 1 am afraid "commercial traveller" would; he too aristocratic a term to apply {to •my busine^, but I sell odds and, .ends of] drapery. ;, to my co-religionists;«in t ihis neighborhood. I, used to supply them on ea^y^payment/, terms, .but Ay. sense of applied; mathematics soon 'taught me •tbat tby .^waiting , for v payment^! I was qharging,them,soo^iQUcn; or eWe I got too little^, for. my goods — when" my customers ;'bmij;#ea.' to ' pay-y^so now^ I only deal- on : teady-money r ' terms. 4 , " 'I cannot say I' was;; surprised at ray son's success/ c'ontimifell Mr Brodetsky,. i'Hb' - has always! been so successful. But I > want to 'sijty this, that my wife and myself andf all my family feel ' the 'greatest^ and|] deepest gratitude to 'this lroeral countra in? providing means for my spns's .e|4ca^ipn, " 'And I. hare- to express w^.-grept-H est indignation, against .- the k j country' where Selig was born. In -Russia such; a career would have be"en Impossible for him. There are. scholarships, but they are open only to members of the Orthodox Greek Church. ?Here my son's .education has cost me' nothing beyond his maintenance in' his"'' early