Hermann Boerner

Hermann Boerner (left) and Helmuth Gericke (1975)

Hermann Boerner (born July 11, 1906 in Leipzig , † June 3, 1982 in Göttingen ) was a German mathematician who dealt with the calculus of variations , function theory and representation theory of groups.

Boerner's father was a well-known art dealer (Antiquariat CG Boerner ) in Leipzig. Boerner first studied art history in Leipzig, then mathematics and theoretical physics. In 1925 he was at the University of Munich, where he a. a. heard from Oskar Perron , and then went back to Leipzig, where he received his doctorate in 1926 under Leon Lichtenstein (“On some eigenvalue problems and their application in the calculus of variations”). In 1931 he spent a summer semester with Constantin Carathéodory , who was a leader in calculus of variations in Germany at the time, in Munich and finally in 1933 as an assistant (initially financed by his father) with Oskar Perron, with whom he also went climbing. In 1934 he completed his habilitation at Caratheodory with "On the extremals and geodetic fields in the calculus of variations in several variables". Boerner also described Caratheodory's “field-theoretical” approach to the calculus of variations in 1979 in Vol. 5 of the “Selecta Mathematica” published by Konrad Jacobs (“Calculus of variations à la Caratheodory and the Zermelosche navigation problem”).

In 1936 he held his first lectures as a lecturer and became an assistant. During the Second World War as a meteorologist in the Air Force and Navy, receiving the Iron Cross First Class for participating in reconnaissance flights over England and Ireland. He experienced the end of the war in Oberwolfach , gave lectures in Munich and Göttingen in 1948, before going to the reopened University of Gießen in 1949 , where he stayed until his retirement in 1971. Already in Oberwolfach during the war he began to deal with the representation theory of groups, about which his book “Representations of groups with consideration of the needs of modern physics” appeared in 1955 by Springer. He died of a brain hemorrhage as a result of falling down stairs.

literature

J. Heinhold and Adalbert Kerber: In memory of Hermann Boerner . In: Annual report DMV . Volume 86, 1984, Issue 3

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Boerner, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	July 11, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH	Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH	3rd June 1982
Place of death	Goettingen