Alfred Loewy

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Alfred Loewy (born June 20, 1873 in Rawitsch near Posen , † January 25, 1935 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German mathematician .

Life

Loewy, who comes from a strictly Orthodox Jewish family, attended the universities of Breslau , Munich , Berlin and Göttingen from 1891 to 1895 . In 1894 he received his doctorate under Ferdinand Lindemann at the University of Munich ( on the transformation of a square shape in itself with applications to line and spherical geometry ). In 1897 he completed his habilitation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , where he became associate professor in 1902, honorary professor in 1916 and professor in 1919. In 1933 he was forced into retirement by the National Socialists . Loewy had problems with his eyes and had been unilateral since 1916 and completely blind after a failed operation in 1928.

Loewy worked on the linear substitution groups, the reduction of algebraic equations and Galois theory , the theory of linear homogeneous differential equations (where he applied methods of group theory) and Stieltjes integrals . He also dealt with actuarial mathematics .

His doctoral students include Wolfgang Krull and Friedrich Karl Schmidt and his students Ernst Witt , Bernhard Neumann , Richard Brauer , Reinhold Baer .

He was the uncle by marriage of the mathematician Adolf Fraenkel , whom he systematically promoted.

In 1912 Loewy was appointed a member of the Leopoldina ; In 1922 he became an extraordinary member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , which honored him in 1933 on the occasion of his 60th birthday with a festschrift.

In April 2003 the artist Gunter Demnig relocated Stolpersteine in memory of Alfred Loewy and his wife Therese at the former residential address Reichsgrafenstraße 14 in Freiburg .

Fonts

  • Algebra Textbook , 1915
  • Basics of Arithmetic , 1915
  • Mathematics of Money and Payments , 1920
  • Actuarial Mathematics , 1903

literature

  • Helmuth Gericke:  Loewy, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 114 ( digitized version ).
  • Gottwald, Ilgauds, Schlote: Lexicon of important mathematicians , 1990
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1979, ISBN 3-262-01204-1 (reprint of the Czernowitz edition 1925).
  • Volker R. Remmert: On the history of mathematics in Freiburg. Alfred Loewy (1873–1935): Sudden end of late splendor. In: Freiburger Universitätsblätter 129 (1995), pp. 81-102

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the theory and application of the intensities in actuarial mathematics . Heidelberg, 1917.
  2. ↑ Cf. Gabriele Dörflinger: Mathematics in the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . 2014. pp. 49–52.
  3. ↑ Alfred Loewy biography on stolpersteine-in-freiburg.de , accessed on May 27, 2019
  4. ↑ Therese Loewy's biography on stolpersteine-in-freiburg.de , accessed on May 27, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Loewy, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Rawitsch
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1935
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau