Paul Epstein (mathematician)

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Stumbling block for Paul Epstein in Frankfurt am Main-Dornbusch

Paul Epstein (born July 24, 1871 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 11, 1939 there ) was a German mathematician . He gained notoriety for his contributions to number theory , in particular by the eponymous Epsteinsche zeta function (a generalized Riemann zeta function ).

Life

Epstein grew up in Frankfurt am Main, where his father, who was of Jewish origin, was a teacher at the Philanthropin . After graduation in 1890 Epstein went to study at the University of Strasbourg in what was then the German Reich belonging Alsace . There he wrote his dissertation on the theory of hyperelliptic integrals under Elwin Bruno Christoffel in 1895 . In the following years he taught at the Technical School in Strasbourg and also worked as a private lecturer at the university from 1903 to 1918 . During the First World War he was a soldier.

When Strasbourg fell to France again after the end of the war, he had to return to Germany and went back to Frankfurt, where he made a significant contribution to the development of the university . He became an extraordinary, non-civil servant professor and, because of his interest in pedagogical questions and the historical development of mathematics, taught in the university's newly established historical-mathematical seminar.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Epstein, who had fought for Germany in World War I , was initially allowed to stay at the university as a “non-Aryan” professor, but after the Nuremberg party congress in autumn 1935, Jewish combatants were also banned from working he renounce his teaching assignment.

During the November pogroms of 1938, the Gestapo also broke into Epstein's house, but withdrew because he was unable to travel due to a chronic illness that was aggravated by stress.

Despite the political situation and unlike his son Fritz Theodor Epstein , who first emigrated to London in 1934 and then to the USA in 1937, Epstein was reluctant to emigrate and moved to Frankfurt-Dornbusch .

At the beginning of August 1939 he received a summons from the Gestapo. Since he feared that he would be tortured or killed like other Jews he had heard of, he put an end to his own life with a fatal overdose of the veronal, then used as a sleeping pill . He died at the age of 68. "The Gestapo later claimed they had invited him to sign a document stating the date of his emigration."

On October 17, 2014, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Goethe University , a stumbling block was laid for him at Körberstrasse 16.

Works (selection)

  • Editor of the Repertory of Higher Mathematics by Ernesto Pascal (1912)
  • Editor of the Encyclopedia of Elementary Mathematics (4th edition 1922)

literature

  • Carl Ludwig Siegel: On the history of the Frankfurt mathematical seminar. Lecture by Professor Dr. Dr. hc Carl Ludwig Siegel on June 13, 1964 in the Mathematical Seminar of the University of Frankfurt on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt . Frankfurt am Main 1965 (Frankfurter Universitätsreden, Issue 36).
  • Renate Heuer , Siegbert Wolf (ed.): The Jews of the Frankfurt University . Campus Judaica, Vol. 6, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 1997.
  • Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze: Mathematician on the run from Hitler . Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1998 p. 91f.
  • Epstein, Paul , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 82

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Epstein's zeta function in: Encyclopedia of Mathematics
  2. ^ Paul Epstein (1871-1939) ( Memento of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); in: Mathematicians persecuted under National Socialism . Project of the Paul-Natorp-Gymnasium, Berlin.