Karin Reich

Karin Anna Reich (nee Bienfang; born October 13, 1941 in Munich ) is a German mathematician.

Reich graduated from the Luisengymnasium in Munich in 1960 . She studied mathematics, physics and astronomy in Munich (diploma 1966 with basics of relativity theory ) and Zurich. From 1967 to 1973 she was a research assistant at the research institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and at the Institute for the History of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where she received her doctorate in 1973 under Helmuth Gericke (with the study The History of Differential Geometry by Gauß to Riemann. 1828–1868 ). In 1980 she qualified as a professor in Munich (on the development of the tensor calculus , published in a revised book in 1994). From 1980 she was professor for the history of natural science and technology at the University of Applied Sciences for Libraries in Stuttgart. In 1980/81 and 1981/82 she had a teaching position for the history of mathematics at the University of Heidelberg , and in 1981 she was the chair for the history of natural sciences at the University of Hamburg. In 1982 she was a private lecturer and in 1988 an extraordinary professor for the history of mathematics at the University of Stuttgart .

From 1994 until her retirement in 2007, Reich was a professor at the Institute for the History of Natural Science, Mathematics and Technology at the University of Hamburg , of which she was director as the successor to Christoph J. Scriba .

Among other things, Reich published biographies on Carl Friedrich Gauß , Michael Stifel and François Viète (with Gericke she edited an annotated translation of In artem analyticam isagoge from 1591) and on the history of vector and tensor calculus (subject of her habilitation) and differential geometry . With Kurt Vogel and Gericke they were in the 1970s, the history of elementary mathematics from John Tropfke reissued.

Reich was a member of the Joachim Jungius Society and is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg , the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and the Academy of Nonprofit Sciences in Erfurt .

Fonts (selection)

• Carl Friedrich Gauss: 1777/1977 , Munich 1977, 2nd edition 1985, ISBN 978-3-89164-019-7 ,
• The development of the tensor calculus. From the absolute differential calculus to the theory of relativity , Birkhäuser 1994, ISBN 978-3-0348-9643-6 , DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3-0348-8486-0 .
• with Gerd Biegel : Carl Friedrich Gauß: Genius from Braunschweig - Professor in Göttingen , Braunschweig 2005, ISBN 978-3-9267-0163-3 .
• Editor (with Alexander Kreuzer) Emil Artin (1898-1962): Contributions to life, work and personality , Rauner Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-9369-0524-3 .
• with Horst Schmidt-Böcking : Otto Stern . Physicist, lateral thinker, Nobel Prize winner . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-942921-23-7 .
• Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen (1809–1876). In this. (Ed.): Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, Gauß to the memory. Edition at Gutenbergplatz Leipzig, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-937219-57-8 ( publisher information ).
• Cauchy and Gauss. Cauchy's reception in the vicinity of Gauss. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Volume 57, 2003, pp. 433-463, DOI: 10.1007 / s00407-002-0064-8 .
• with Elena Roussanova: Carl Friedrich Gauß and Russia. His correspondence with scientists working in Russia , treatises Akad. Wiss. Göttingen, NF 16, De Gruyter 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025307-8 , DOI: 10.1515 / 9783110253078 .
• with Eberhard Knobloch , Elena Roussanova: Alexander von Humboldt's stroke of genius: Background and consequences of his letter to the Duke of Sussex for the study of geomagnetism , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-662-48163-9 , DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3- 662-48164-6 .
• with Elena Roussanova: Karl Kreil and geomagnetism. His correspondence with Carl Friedrich Gauß in a historical context , Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2018 (Memoranda / Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Volume 508), ISBN 978-3-7001-8186-6 .

literature

• Gudrun Wolfschmidt (Ed.): "There is no special path to geometry for kings". Festschrift for Karin Reich . Rauner, Augsburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-936905-23-6 .
• Alexander Odefey (ed.): To the history of the mathematical sciences. Festschrift for Karin Reich on her 65th birthday . Publishing house for the history of natural sciences and technology, Diepholz et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-928186-80-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karin Reich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the University of Hamburg
• List of publications
• Karin Reich in the database of renowned academics AcademiaNet
• Karin Reich in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)

Single receipts

1. ↑ Published in the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 11, 1973, pp. 273–382, doi: 10.1007 / BF00357392 .