Otto Toeplitz

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Otto Toeplitz

Otto Toeplitz (born August 1, 1881 in Breslau ; died February 15, 1940 in Jerusalem ) was a German mathematician of Jewish origin.

life and work

Otto Toeplitz came from a Jewish family from Lissa who had already produced several math teachers. Both his father Emil Toeplitz (born on October 15, 1852 in Lissa; died on August 22, 1917 in Breslau) and his grandfather Julius Toeplitz (born on December 5, 1825 in Lissa; died on August 4, 1897 in Lissa) taught Mathematics at a grammar school (Comenius grammar school in Lissa or Johannes grammar school in Breslau ). At the beginning of the 20th century, his father, Prof. Emil Toeplitz, was the editor of the philologists' annual Kunze's calendar . This was developed in 1895 by the German philologist Karl Kunze , Lissa, (1840–1895) on behalf of the German Association of Philologists and has been published annually since then. Otto grew up in Breslau and began studying mathematics there with Jacob Rosanes and Rudolf Sturm after graduating from high school . In 1905 he received his doctorate with a thesis on algebraic geometry . From his time in Breslau he was friends with Max Born and Richard Courant .

In 1906 Toeplitz went to Göttingen , where he completed his habilitation the following year with the work on the transformation of the multitudes of bilinear forms of infinitely many variables and then taught as a private lecturer. On arrival, David Hilbert was busy with his theory of integral equations , especially the spectral theory of bounded symmetric operators, and Toeplitz wrote several papers on this topic (structures of linear algebra in spectral theory, invention of the Toeplitz operators, etc.) Student Ernst Hellinger worked together, with whom he also became friends. In 1913 he went to Kiel as an associate professor at the Christian Albrechts University . In 1920 he was appointed full professor there. Together with Ernst Hellinger, Toeplitz completed an article on integral equations for the respected encyclopedia of mathematical sciences , which was published in 1927. In 1928 Toeplitz took over a chair at the University of Bonn as the successor to the geometer Eduard Study , where he had a much higher number of students than in Kiel. In Bonn he was friends with Felix Hausdorff .

The Toeplitz matrices he introduced in 1911 have applications in the theory of Fourier transforms , in crystallography and the development of fast algorithms. The presumption of Toeplitz (1911) that each Jordan curve has an inscribed square, as before except for special cases open.

Otto Toeplitz (right) with Alexander Ostrowski

Despite the racist "Law to Restore the Professional Civil Service" of 1933 Toeplitz was still able to teach until 1935. He was then removed from office as a Jew and retired. After his retirement he worked as head of the Jewish community in Bonn and taught Jewish schoolchildren. He founded a Jewish school and, as head of the university department of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, organized, above all, the emigration of Jewish students to the USA. Stunned, he recorded the consequence of the dismissals and the suicides of professors in index cards. At the beginning of February 1939 the increasing pressure of persecution forced him to emigrate to Palestine, which was under British mandate administration. He died in Jerusalem a year after leaving.

Toeplitz (right) with Gottfried Köthe (left) in Bonn in 1930

In the 1930s he worked with his student Gottfried Köthe on his own theory of infinitely dimensional spaces, as Stefan Banach's theory was too abstract for him. To this end, he transferred ideas of finite dimensional linear algebra as in his work in Göttingen at the beginning of the century.

Toeplitz was a passionate teacher and was strongly influenced by Felix Klein here and in his interest in the history of mathematics . This found particular expression in his mathematics-didactics colloquium for prospective teachers in Kiel. In 1926 he gave a lecture on analysis lessons at the natural scientist conference in Düsseldorf, which was highly regarded at the time, advocating the historical method that reproduces the path of discovery ("genetic"). He also wrote a book on the history of analysis: The development of calculus. A genetic approximation (edited posthumously in German in 1949 and published by Gottfried Köthe). Toeplitz was also interested in the relationship between classical Greek mathematics and philosophy and was a frequent visitor to the mathematics seminar in Frankfurt , on which his friend Hellinger had been working since 1914. He also had his own seminar on Greek mathematics with Heinrich Scholz and Julius Stenzel in Kiel . With the latter and Otto Neugebauer , he founded the journal Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik . With Heinrich Behnke , he founded the mathematical-physical semester reports , which are still in existence today, in 1932 and are aimed primarily at mathematics teachers.

Toeplitz is described by Heinrich Behnke as friendly, open (also towards criticism) and helpful. He was very interested in his students, had extensive conversations with many in a friendly atmosphere and knew them very well.

With Hans Rademacher in 1930 he wrote a widespread popular introduction to the mathematics of numbers and figures , in which u. a. elementary number theory, minima / maxima problems, polyhedra, topology, four-color theorem and geometry problems such as curves of constant diameter are treated. The book emerged from public lectures.

family

One of his sons, Uri (Erich) Toeplitz (1913-2006), was a flutist by profession and co-founder of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra .

See also

Fonts

literature

  • Hans Rademacher , Toeplitz: Of numbers and figures. Springer, 2001 (first 1930, 2nd edition 1933), preface Horst Tietz , ISBN 3-540-63303-0 , English The Enjoyment of Mathematics , ISBN 0-691-02351-4 .
  • Israel Gohberg (Ed.): Toeplitz Centennial. (Conference Tel-Aviv 1981), Birkhäuser 1982, ISBN 3-7643-1333-1 (there biography of Jean Dieudonné and memories of Gottfried Köthe ).
  • Otto Toeplitz 1881–1940. Bonn 1982 (collection of articles on the 100th birthday).
  • Heinrich Behnke , Gottfried Köthe : Otto Toeplitz in memory. Annual report DMV Vol. 66, 1963, p. 1 (Behnke's obituary is almost the same as in Mathematisch Physikalische Semesterberichte, Vol. 1, 1949, p. 89, Köthe deals with the scientific work).
  • Carl Ludwig Siegel : On the history of the Frankfurt Mathematics Seminar. Mathematical Intelligencer Vol. 1, 1978/9, Issue 4.
  • Uri Toeplitz: And words are not enough. ( From mathematics in Germany to music in Israel. A Jewish family history 1812–1998. ) Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz, 1999.

Web links

Commons : Otto Toeplitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Otto Toeplitz  - Sources and full texts

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Barbara von der Lühe: Music was our salvation! The German-speaking founding members of the Palestine Orchestra . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1998. ISBN 3-16-146975-5 , pp. 89-92.
personal data
SURNAME Toeplitz, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician, professor of mathematics, emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1940
Place of death Jerusalem