"With this task in mind, in 1912, I was looking for my old student friend Marcel Grossmann, who had meanwhile become a professor of mathematics in the Swiss Federal Polytechnic institute. He was immediately caught in the fire, even though he had as a real mathematician a somewhat skeptical attitude towards physics. When we were both students, and we used to exchange thoughts in the Café, he once said such a beautiful and characteristic remark that I cannot help but quoting it here: 'I admit that from studying physics I have benefitted nothing essential. When I sat on the chair earlier and I felt a little of the heat that came from my "pre-seated" it grazed me a little. This has completely passed, because physics has taught me to consider writing that heat is something very impersonal'.