I thought about asking this question a while ago, but decided against it. But now I see a question about Eichler's "modular forms" quote, so while I guess it's probably still, um, questionable, what the hey.
So when Serre won the Fields Medal in 1954, Hermann Weyl (I guess) presented the award and described Serre's work. The Wikipedia article on Serre describes it thus: "…Weyl praised Serre in seemingly extravagant terms, and also made the point that the award was for the first time awarded to an algebraist."
If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, this is the speech where Weyl says something like "Never before have I seen such a rapid or bright ascension of a star in the mathematical sky as yours," if you've heard that quote.
Anyway, I've been trying to find a full version of Weyl's remarks (just out of curiosity), but to no avail. I would guess it would probably be in the congress proceedings somewhere, but I don't really have a copy on me. Anyone know where else I could find it?
Best Answer
Google Books snippet view shows you different little snippets of the speech. The beginning of the speechs has "by study and information we became convinced that Serre and Kodaira had not only made highly original and important..." If you do a search for the phrase "convinced that Serre" (with quotes) in Google Books, you'll find several books that have the speech: "International Mathematical Congresses: An Illustrated History", the ICM Proceedings, a French "Compte Rendu" of the Proceedings, and the "Gesammelte Abhandlungen" of Hermann Weyl. The search comes up empty elsewhere, which strongly suggests that you need to get one of these books from the library for the whole speech.
The Intelligencer has the last paragraph, which has been reprinted many times and is surely fair use: