Walther von Dyck

Portrait of Walther von Dyck (source: Kepler Society).

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Walther Franz Anton von Dyck (born December 6, 1856 in Munich ; † November 5, 1934 there ) was a German mathematician .

Life

Walther Dyck was the son of Hermann Dyck , the director of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, and his son also had artistic interests. He studied in Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and received his doctorate in Munich in 1879 under Felix Klein ( On regularly branched Riemann surfaces and the irrationalities defined by them ). In 1880 he followed Klein as an assistant to Leipzig, where he received his habilitation in 1882. In 1884 he became a professor at the Royal Bavarian Technical University of Munich , today's Technical University , where he improved his mathematical engineering training and was rector from 1903 to 1906 and 1919 to 1925. On March 5, 1901, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown and, as a knight of Dyck, was raised to the personal nobility on the basis of the statutes of the order . In 1887 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Together with Oskar von Miller and Carl von Linde, he co-founded the Deutsches Museum in Munich. One of his most famous students was Martin Wilhelm Kutta . He is known, among other things, for the Dyck languages named after him . From 1892 he was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and from 1924 to 1934 class secretary. From 1906 he began at the Academy with the preparations for the publication of the works of Johannes Kepler , whose publication he did not live to see from 1937; the edition was then looked after by Max Caspar . In 1901 and 1912 he was chairman of the German Mathematicians Association . From 1925 to 1926 he was chairman of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors .

As a mathematician, he was committed to the research directions of his teacher Felix Klein and devoted himself particularly to group theory and function theory. He also dealt with differential geometry and worked on the Gauss-Bonnet theorem .

In 1908 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome on the project of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences . During the Nazi era, the main building of the Technical University of Munich on Arcisstrasse was given the address Walther-von-Dyck-Platz 1 in his honor.

Walther von Dyck's grave is in the Solln cemetery .

Works

• Catalog of mathematical and mathematical-physical models, apparatus and instruments . : with addendum / with a foreword by Joachim Fischer. - emphasis. Olms, Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-487-09865-2 .

literature

• Georg Faber :  Dyck, Walther von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 210 ( digitized version ).
• Ulf Hashagen : Walther von Dyck (1856–1934). Mathematics, technology and science organization at the TH Munich . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-515-08359-6

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Member entry by Walther Ritter von Dyck (with a link to an obituary) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 29, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Walther von Dyck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Walther von Dyck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Overview of Walther von Dyck's courses at the University of Leipzig (winter semester 1881 to winter semester 1883)
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Walther von Dyck. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Walther von Dyck in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
• Part of the estate is in the Bavarian State Library