Ernst Hellinger

Ernst David Hellinger (born September 30, 1883 in Striegau / Province of Silesia , † March 28, 1950 in Chicago ) was a German mathematician .

Ernst Hellinger studied mathematics at the universities of Heidelberg , Breslau and Göttingen with David Hilbert . He became friends with Max Born during his studies . In his doctoral thesis from 1907 he developed a new type of integral , the so-called Hellinger integral . He later developed the Hilbert-Hellinger theory together with Hilbert . In 1914 he became a professor in Frankfurt. In 1914, in the field of theoretical mechanics , Hellinger contributed significantly to the formulation of the canonical principle of variation, which half a century later would play a major role in the development of the finite element method .

In 1936, as a Jew, he was forced into retirement by the National Socialists . Even after the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 he refused to flee and was arrested on November 13th and deported to the Dachau concentration camp . Following the intercession of influential friends, he was released from the concentration camp after six weeks on condition that he would emigrate. In February 1939 Hellinger traveled to the USA .

There he worked in the field of integral calculus and spectral theory until his death in 1950 . His article Integral Equations and Equations with Infinitely Many Unknowns from 1927 is a classic in the field of integral equations . The Hellinger-Toeplitz theorem is connected with his name.

Web links

Literature by and about Ernst Hellinger in the catalog of the German National Library
John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Ernst Hellinger. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Gabriele Dörflinger: Ernst Hellinger . A collection of material from Historia Mathematica Heidelbergensis

Individual evidence

^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, pp. 891ff., ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .

personal data
SURNAME	Hellinger, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hellinger, Ernst David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	September 30, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH	Striegau (now Poland)
DATE OF DEATH	March 28, 1950
Place of death	Chicago

[1] Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, pp. 891ff., ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .