Georg Alexander Pick

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Georg Alexander Pick (August 10, 1859, Vienna – July 26, 1942) was an Austrian mathematician, after whom Pick's theorem is named. He was born to Josefa Schleisinger and Adolf Josef Pick. He died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Pick in 1911 introduced Albert Einstein to the work of Italian mathematicians Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita in the field of absolute differential calculus, which later in 1915 helped Einstein to successfully formulate General relativity.

Pick studied at the University of Vienna and defended his Ph.D. in 1880 under Leo Königsberger. Charles Loewner was one of his students in Prague. Pick was elected a member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, but was expelled after Nazis took over Prague.

After retiring in 1927 Pick returned to Vienna, the city where he was born. When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938 he ran to Prague, but in March 1939 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Pick was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp in July 1942 where he died.

[edit] See also

• Schwarz-Pick lemma
• Schwarz–Ahlfors–Pick theorem

[edit] External links

• Column from the Cut The Knot! site
• O'Connor, John J. & Robertson, Edmund F., “Georg Alexander Pick”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive 
• Georg Alexander Pick at the Mathematics Genealogy Project