Felix Behrend
Felix Adalbert Behrend (born April 23, 1911 in Charlottenburg , † May 27, 1962 in Richmond (Australia) ) was a German-Australian mathematician.
Life
Behrend was the son of Felix Wilhelm Behrend , a math and physics teacher at the Herderschule in Berlin, to which Felix Behrend also went. His sister is the British economist Hilde Behrend .
After graduating from secondary school in 1929, he studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Hamburg and the Humboldt University in Berlin , where he received his doctorate in number theory under Erhard Schmidt in 1933 ( About numeri abundantes ). Even before his dissertation, he had published three papers on number theory. After the seizure of the Nazis , he left as a Jew Germany (where his father was fired as head teacher because of Jewish descent), studied at the University of Cambridge and then went to Zurich and Prague, where he worked as an actuary and the researcher Charles University. During the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 he fled to Zurich and from there to London, but was interned as a German in 1940 and deported to Australia. In 1942 he was released and became a tutor at the University of Melbourne , where he continued to study number theory and projective planes. In 1943 he became a lecturer and in 1954 an associate professor in Melbourne. In the 1950s, his main interests changed from number theory to general topology. He died when he was only 51.
In 1963, his widow donated Behrend Memorial Lectures in Mathematics at Melbourne University.
He also wrote a children's book Ulysses Father . He was in correspondence with Thomas Mann , whom he met in exile in Prague.
literature
- BH Neumann : Felix Adalbert Behrend , Journal of the London Mathematical Society 38, 1963, pp. 308–310 (English; obituary; online )
- TM Cherry , BH Neumann: Felix Adalbert Behrend , Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society 4, May 1964, pp. 264–270, doi: 10.1017 / S1446788700023466 (English; obituary; with list of publications)
- M. Pinl : colleagues in a dark time , annual report of DMV 71, 1969, pp. 173-174.
- JJ Cross: Behrend, Felix Adalbert (1911–1962) . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Volume 13. Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1994, ISBN 0-522-84512-6 (English).
- Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 70.
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Felix Behrend. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Individual evidence
- ^ Preuss meeting reports. Akad. Wiss., 1932, pp. 322-329.
- ^ Chesire Publishing House, Melbourne / Canberra / Sydney 1962.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Behrend, Felix |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Behrend, Felix Adalbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 23, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Charlottenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 27, 1962 |
| Place of death | Richmond (Australia) |