Kurt Hirsch (mathematician)

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Kurt Hirsch (left), Karl W. Gruenberg (center) and Richard Bruck 1960

Kurt August Hirsch (born January 12, 1906 in Berlin ; † November 4, 1986 in London ) was a British mathematician of German origin who dealt with group theory.

Life and activity

Kurt August Hirsch was born in Berlin as the son of the soap manufacturer Robert Hirsch (1856–1913) and his wife Anna Lehmann, a granddaughter of the Hamburg portrait painter Leo Lehmann . His paternal grandfather was the pathologist and medical historian August Hirsch , who was temporarily rector of the Berlin University. In 1913 his father's company went bankrupt and Robert Hirsch committed suicide . Kurt was sent to a boarding school in Frankfurt an der Oder .

After attending school, Hirsch studied mathematics and philosophy at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin. His studies were financed by a scholarship that he received because of his grandfather's previous position at this university. His teachers included Ludwig Bieberbach , Richard von Mises , Issai Schur and Erhard Schmidt . In 1933 he received his doctorate with a thesis supervised by Max Dessoir on the dispute between the intuitionists around Brouwer and the formalists around David Hilbert ( Intuition and logical form. On the contemporary philosophy of mathematics ). He had already submitted his dissertation in 1930 and passed his examination in the same year, but was not able to afford the pressure necessary to complete the doctorate financially until 1933.

Since 1928 Hirsch worked alongside his mathematical studies as a science journalist for the Vossische Zeitung . In the mathematical field he was particularly concerned with the work of Emmy Noether and Otto Schreier at this time and, under this influence, decided to turn to group theory .

After the National Socialists came to power , Hirsch found himself in political distress in the spring of 1933: he had been married to a Jew since 1928, converted to the Jewish faith for her sake and, according to the National Socialist definition, was also considered a Jew because of his Jewish ancestors. In 1934 the Vossische Zeitung had to stop publishing. In the same year, Hirsch emigrated to Great Britain with his wife and two young children, where he had distant relatives.

In England, through Bernhard Neumann's mediation, Hirsch met the group theorist Philip Hall , who encouraged him to devote himself entirely to mathematics. In 1937 he received his doctorate for a second time with Hall at Cambridge University , this time with a thesis on polycyclic groups ( A class of infinite soluble groups ). The term “ deer length ” that arose in this context goes back to his name. In 1938 he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Leicester .

After his emigration, Hirsch was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police forces: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who were considered opponents of the regime by the Nazi surveillance apparatus and who would be in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles were to be located and arrested by SS Special Commands with special priority.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Hirsch was interned for a short time on the Isle of Man in 1940 - since he was formally still a German citizen - as a member of a hostile power , where he worked as a cook . After his release he returned to Leicester. In 1947 Kurt and Elsa Hirsch received British citizenship .

In 1948 Hirsch went to the King's College in Newcastle upon Tyne , later Newcastle University, as a professor . There he began to translate the group theory textbook by Alexander Kurosch from Russian into English, the first volume of which appeared in 1955. Translations of other works by Russian mathematicians followed. His own publications dealt mainly with group theory, he researched not only polycyclic groups but also nilpotent and Abelian groups .

In 1951 he became a professor at Queen Mary College, University of London , where he stayed until the end of his career. 1954/55 he was visiting professor at the University of Colorado .

Family and miscellaneous

Kurt Hirsch had been married to Elsa Brühl since 1928, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He was an avid chess player who won several championships in English counties and an avid hobby cook for life.

Kurt Hirsch was a brother-in-law of the publicist Sebastian Haffner .

Fonts

  • Intuition and logical form. On the contemporary philosophy of mathematics , 1933. (Dissertation)
  • The Automorphism Groups of Abelian P-Groups , 1961.
  • Torsion-Free Groups Having Finite Automorphism Groups , 1961.

literature

  • German Biographical Encyclopedia , Vol. 4 (Görres-Hittorp), Munich 2006, p. 876.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Proof of dissertations in the Mathematics Genealogy Project , accessed on September 20, 2016.
  2. ^ Entry on Hirsch on the special wanted list GB , documented in the genealogy project of the British armed forces ( Forces War Records ), accessed on September 20, 2016.
  3. ↑ He translated works such as Schafarewitsch's Basic Algebraic Geometry , Kurosch's Algebra Lectures, and Gantmacher's Theory of Matrices.
  4. ^ Jürgen Peter Schmied: Sebastian Haffner. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60585-7 , p. 58.
personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirsch, Kurt August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th November 1986
Place of death London