Rudolf Henn (economist)

Rudolf Henn (Photo K. Jacobs)

Rudolf Henn (born November 9, 1922 in Neuwied ; † November 18, 1989 in Heidelberg ) was a German economist who made special contributions to the mathematization of economics and the development of operations research in Germany.

Live and act

At the state high school for boys in Neuwied, Henn obtained the certificate of maturity in March 1941. He was then drafted into the Wehrmacht and took part in World War II, most recently as a company commander in a tank regiment. When he returned from Italy in 1945, he first had to "make ends meet" with odd jobs (including as a lumberjack) before he was finally able to start studying economics at the Technical University Fridericiana in Karlsruhe in autumn 1947 after an internship at the Heidelberg regional savings bank. In the winter semester of 1948/49 he switched to Walter Georg Waffenschmidt at the Mannheim Business School . In October 1950 he passed the diploma examination there. In July 1953 he received his doctorate in Mannheim with the dissertation “The evaluation of economic observations” supervised by Waffenschmidt.

Henn then first became a research assistant, then assistant at Waffenschmidt's chair; at the same time he received a teaching position for statistics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In the spring of 1956 he took over the leadership of a research group “Mathematical Economic Theory” at Waffenschmidt, which was made up of mathematicians and economists on an equal footing. Also in the spring of 1956, Henn received his habilitation at the Mannheim Business School with the thesis “About dynamic economic models”. In November 1956, however, he was re-qualified at the University of Heidelberg, where he began working with Wilhelm Kromphardt.

In 1958/59 Henn accepted a position as an associate professor for economics and operations research at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). After a visiting professorship at the University of Basel , he accepted a professorship for econometrics and statistics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 1963 . After a visiting professorship at Wayne State University in Detroit (Michigan, USA), he accepted a professorship for econometrics and business research at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1966 . Despite offers from the Technical University of Vienna (1969) and the University of Augsburg (1970), he continued to work in Karlsruhe until he succumbed to cancer on November 18, 1989.

Like his academic teacher Waffenschmidt, Henn was a pioneer of mathematical economic theory and its applications in econometrics and business research. His main concern was to transfer economics from descriptive to explaining and planning. In 1962, together with Wilhelm Kromphardt and Karl Förstner, he wrote one of the first German-language textbooks on linear decision models, in 1963 founded the scientific journal “ Operations Research Verfahren” (later “Methods of Operations Research”), and helped found the research institute for “Mathematics und Ökonometrie ", which was located in Rheda / Bielefeld, initiated the establishment of the" Industrial Engineering "course at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) in 1969, and organized a first conference on operations research in 1969 together with the economist Hans Paul Künzi and the mathematician Horst Schubert Mathematical Research Institute Oberwolfach , which was followed by a whole series of follow-up conferences, initiated the “Symposium on Operations Research” held from 1976 and was a co-founder of the “Society for Mathematics, Economics and Operations Research” (GMÖOR). As a research assistant, he mainly chose those with a first degree in mathematics - the mathematicians Günter Bamberg, Georg Bol, Bernd Goldstein, Jochen Hülsmann, Hartmut Noltemeier, Otto Opitz, Franz-Josef Radermacher, Burkhard Rauhut and Volker Steinmetz were later appointed to economic / mathematical chairs .

In his more treated than 30 journal articles Henn especially problems in the areas stochastics (economic applications of stochastic processes , in particular Markov chains , stochastic decision theory, econometrics ...), Operations Research ( simplex algorithm , cost graphs ...) and Economic Theory (Macroeconomic growth models , equilibrium theory , strategic games ...).

Fonts

• The evaluation of economic observations , Meisenheim: Westkulturverlag 1955
• On dynamic economic models , Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1957
• with Karl Förstner: Dynamic Production Theory and Linear Programming , Meisenheim: Hain 1957, 2nd edition 1970
• with Wilhelm Kromphardt and Karl Förstner: Linear Decision Models , Berlin: Springer 1962
• with Hans Paul Künzi: Introduction to Corporate Research , Berlin: Springer 1968
• with Otto Opitz : Consumption and Production Theory, Lecture Notes in Operations Research and Mathematical Systems No. 71, Berlin: Springer 1972
• with Günter Bamberg and Karl Förstner: Introduction to probability theory , Meisenheim: Hain 1973
• Elementary growth models , Meisenheim: Hain 1977
• with Peter Kischka: Statistics: Theory and Applications in Economics , Königstein: Athenaeum; Part I 1979; Part II 1981
• with Lothar Späth , Hermann Lübbe and Gerhard Krüger: Employment and Technology Transfer , Königstein: Athenaeum 1985
• with Lothar Späth , Hermann Lübbe and Gerhard Krüger: Employment and the Transfer of Technolog , Berlin: Springer 1986

A complete list of Henn's writings can be found in the obituary written by Burkhard Rauhut (DMV annual report 1993).

literature

• Burkhard Rauhut: Rudolf Henn: Eine Bilanz , Jahresbericht DMV, Volume 95, 1993, pp. 153-165
• Rudolf Henn estate ( http://www.archiv.kit.edu/104.php?signatur=27053 )
• Otto Opitz: Economics and Mathematics: Rudolf Henn for his 65th birthday , Berlin: Springer 1987

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Henn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Oberwolfach Photo Collection ( http://owpdb.mfo.de/search?term=rudolf+henn )