I've seen it claimed now several times in this thread that in the post-war period it was typical for mathematicians to get hired into tenure-track, or even tenured, positions directly after graduating. I don't see any evidence that this was true. Checking the cvs of three randomly chosen very famous mathematicians who graduated in this period (Stein, Atiyah, Mumford), it looks like they all did postdocs.

> I don't see any evidence that this was true. Checking the cvs of three randomly chosen very famous mathematicians who graduated in this period (Stein, Atiyah, Mumford), it looks like they all did postdocs.

This was addressed in my comment:

> Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.

Don't look at people who are outliers. Pick a random university in Oklahoma, Kansas, etc. Find someone who joined in the 80's or earlier. Check their CV. Did they do a postdoc?

Only one I could find at OU of that age with either a bio or cv online was Andy Magid, who graduated in 1969 and did a postdoc before taking a tenure-track position there. Seriously, if you have evidence that this was common, provide it.

I think you just showed that such evidence is not likely to be available at a casual Google search. Older professors who probably didn't have to do postdocs are probably less likely to post their CVs online.