The academic year 1938–39 began with the Munich agreement. It was Courant's fifth year at NYU. He carried on his teaching duties, lecturing and conducting his seminar. He continued to concentrate on Plateau's problem and other minimal-surface problems. He worked with various students on What Is Mathematics?, paying them out of a $1500 grant he had obtained from the Rockefeller Foundation for that purpose. He also approached the Philosophical Society about a grant to write a book on Dirichlet's principle. He gave demonstrations of soap-film experiments and a talk on the radio on "Infinity." He participated in the early stages of the negotiations which resulted in Neugebauer's coming to America as editor of the new abstracting journal sponsored by the American Mathematical Society—the Mathematical Reviews. He continued to seek financial support for the library and for fellowships at the Graduate Center, to arrange to bring important mathematicians there to lecture, to try to broaden the base of interest in New York City as a whole.