Oswald Teichmüller
| Oswald Teichmüller | |
|---|---|
| Born |
13 June 1913 Nordhausen, Saxony |
| Died |
11 September 1943 (aged 30) Dnieper, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
| Doctoral advisor | Helmut Hasse |
| Known for |
Teichmüller mapping Teichmüller space |
Oswald Teichmüller (18 June 1913 – ca. September 1943) was a German mathematician who introduced quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into complex analysis.
Life
Teichmüller was born in Nordhausen. He grew up in Sankt Andreasberg and earned his Abitur in 1931. In the same year he started studying mathematics at the University of Göttingen. Among his professors were Richard Courant, Hermann Weyl, Otto Neugebauer, Gustav Herglotz, and Edmund Landau. Teichmüller received his doctorate in 1935 under Helmut Hasse.
He joined the Nazi Party in July 1931 and became a member of the Sturmabteilung in August 1931. In 1933 he organized the boycott of his Jewish professor Edmund Landau.[1] In 1936 and 1937 he attended lectures by Nevanlinna, who sympathized with the Third Reich, where he was a guest professor and, like Brouwer, was considered by the Nazis as "politically reliable" (Rudolf Heß was in charge of the assessment).[2] Under the influence of Nevanlinna, Teichmüller specialized in geometric function theory. Upon personal authorisation from the Führer, he joined the Wehrmacht in 1939 and was killed fighting on the Eastern Front.
Mathematics
The theory of Teichmüller spaces (a moduli space theory for Riemann surfaces) was developed by Lars Ahlfors, Lipman Bers and others. The Teichmüller representative or Teichmüller character is a construction with p-adic numbers.
Much of Teichmüller's work was published in Deutsche Mathematik, a highly ideological journal founded by Ludwig Bieberbach that contained not only scholarly articles but also race propaganda. Because of the nature of the journal, his papers were hard to find in modern libraries before the publication of his collected works.
Publications
- Teichmüller, Oswald (1982), Ahlfors, Lars V.; Gehring, Frederick W., eds., Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-10899-3, MR 649778
Quotation
- " ... he was a genius but as an extreme Nazi shamefully stood out with his agitation against Landau and Courant." (in: Entzifferte Geheimnisse. Methoden und Maximen der Kryptologie. English title: Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology)
References
- ↑ Thomas Huckle. Jüdische Mathematiker im "Dritten Reich" (Jewish Mathematicians in (the) "Third Reich") (in German).
- ↑ Lehto, Olli: Korkeat maailmat. Rolf Nevanlinnan elämä. Otava, 2001.
External links
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Oswald Teichmüller", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- Oswald Teichmüller at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Papadopoulos, Athanase, ed. (2007), Handbook of Teichmüller theory. Vol. I, IRMA Lectures in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, 11, European Mathematical Society (EMS), Zürich, doi:10.4171/029, ISBN 978-3-03719-029-6, MR2284826
- Papadopoulos, Athanase, ed. (2009), Handbook of Teichmüller theory. Vol. II, IRMA Lectures in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, 13, European Mathematical Society (EMS), Zürich, doi:10.4171/055, ISBN 978-3-03719-055-5, MR2524085
- Papadopoulos, Athanase, ed. (2012), Handbook of Teichmüller theory. Vol. III, IRMA Lectures in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, 19, European Mathematical Society (EMS), Zürich, doi:10.4171/103, ISBN ISBN 978-3-03719-103-3
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