Jakow Trachtenberg

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Jakow Trachtenberg (born June 17, 1888 in Odessa ; † 1953 ) was a Russian engineer and the inventor of the Trachtenberg high-speed calculation method .

Life

Jakow Trachtenberg completed his engineering studies with honors in Saint Petersburg . He later began to work for the Obukhov plant in St. Petersburg , where he became chief engineer. After the October Revolution , Trachtenberg fled to Berlin disguised as a farmer from the Soviets . Here he found a new home and married Countess Alice von Bredow, daughter of the court painter of the last Tsar Nicholas II. He wrote articles for a pacifist magazine and, as a Russia connoisseur, published a book on Russian industry.

Shortly after the takeover of the Nazis in early 1933, he published a drawn up in German, English and French brochure called "The atrocity propaganda is false propaganda, the German Jews themselves say," in which he tried to take the Nazis against foreign press reports in protection. Nevertheless, in 1934 he fled with his wife to Vienna in Austria , where he was only safe until Austria was annexed to the German Reich . He was arrested but was able to flee to Yugoslavia , where he initially lived underground , until he was arrested again and then spent four years in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps . Here he began to develop his mathematical methods, whereby he did not write anything down because he had neither paper nor pens at his disposal. With the help of his wife, who bribed the guards, he was able to flee to Switzerland in 1945 .

In Switzerland he further developed his methods and published the rapid calculation method developed “in 22 prisons and cellars of the Gestapo” in the so-called Trachtenberg primer. The first and second editions of his primer were sold out just six days after it was published . He gained some notoriety and taught his method until his death at an institute he founded in Switzerland.

However, Trachtenberg only became known worldwide after his death through the book The Trachtenberg Speed ​​System of Basic Mathematics by the American journalists Ann Cutler and Rudolph McShane, which made his fast calculation method known in the English-speaking world. The book became a bestseller. In Germany, the book was published under the title The Trachtenberg Schnellrechenethod .

The Trachtenberg high-speed calculation method

The Trachtenberg high-speed calculation method consists of a collection of memory rules such as B. “Double every digit and add the neighbors”, some of which were already known, but were systematically summarized and published by Trachtenberg for the first time.

Whether this calculation method was actually invented by him while he was in concentration camp is controversial. There are references to a high-speed calculation method from the time of the Weimar Republic, which at that time was called the cross method or cross multiples and is attributed to a doctor named Ferrol. This cross multiple is methodologically the same as the procedure taught by Trachtenberg in Switzerland from 1950.

literature

To person
To the calculation method
  • Ann Cutler, Rudolph McShane: The Trachtenberg high-speed calculation method . Hyperion-Verlag, Freiburg i. Br. 1963, 272 pages, without ISBN
  • Ann Cutler, Rudolph McShane: The Trachtenberg Speed ​​System of Basic Mathematics . Souvenir Press 2008, 270 pages, ISBN 978-0-285-62916-5
  • Holger Dambeck: Zeros make ones big: Math tricks for all situations . KiWi-Paperback Verlag 2013, 2nd edition, ISBN 978-3462045116
  • Katja Löscher: Alternative calculation methods to the written normal methods of basic arithmetic operations . Grin Verlag 2008, ISBN 9783640117611

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Half neighbor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1963 ( online ).
  2. ^ Google Books
  3. ^ Karl Menninger (mathematician) : Arithmetic tricks: Funny and advantageous arithmetic - a teaching and manual for daily arithmetic , 1931
personal data
SURNAME Trachtenberg, Jakow
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Трахтенберг, Яков (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian engineer and the inventor of the Trachtenberg high-speed calculation method
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Odessa , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 1951 or 1953