personal communication from Dr. Victor S. Alpher. Apparently Alpher himself believed that the scholarship was withdrawn due to the anti-Semitism widely prevalent in American academic institutions at the time. In the article he published in Discover magazine (see D'Agnese), Joseph D'Agnese writes But there's a catch. MIT says the scholarship is good only if Alpher attends full-time and does not work. This is the Great Depression. Alpher's immigrant father is a home builder in Washington, D.C., at a time when no one can afford to buy a house. Alpher doesn't even have train fare to Boston. How can he go to school if he can't work part-time for books and meals? The letter tells him to meet with an alumnus in Washington. He talks to the alum for hours, hoping to find a way to make this work. But the guy keeps turning the conversation back to the same subject—religion—and asks Alpher about his religious beliefs. "I told him I was Jewish," Alpher says. Soon after, a second letter comes. The scholarship is withdrawn, without explanation. "My brother had told me not to get my hopes up," Alpher says, "and he was damn right. It was a searing experience. He said it was unrealistic to think that a Jew could go anywhere back then. I don't know if you know what it was like for Jews before World War II. It was terrible." Later on, he was discouraged from majoring in Chemistry at GWU for similar reasons.
Alpher, Ralph A.. "Cosmology and Humanism". Humanism Today3: 15–27. http://www.humanismtoday.org/vol3/alpher.pdf. பார்த்த நாள்: 2022-12-08. "This leads inevitably to my identifying philosophically as an agnostic and a humanist, and explains my temerity in sharing my views with you.".
