Werner Weber (mathematician)

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Werner Weber (Werner Ludwig Eduard) (born January 3, 1906 in Oberstein (an d. Nahe), † February 2, 1975 in Hamburg ) was a German mathematician .

The son of a businessman graduated from high school in 1924. He studied mathematics in Hamburg and Göttingen and passed the teaching state examination (mathematics, physics, biology) in Göttingen in 1928. The doctorate in mathematics with distinction took place on 1930 in Göttingen with Emmy Noether with a dissertation: Ideal theoretical interpretation of the representability of any natural numbers by square forms . In Göttingen, he completed his habilitation in 1931 with Edmund Landau , with whom he had been an assistant since 1928 and whom he represented in 1933 after his leave of absence. Landau and Noether had judged his dissertation to be excellent, but Weber was considered a mediocre mathematician, and his usefulness to Landau consisted mainly in his precise proofreading skills, which Landau valued (according to an anecdote that was popular at the time, he was able to to distinguish an italic point from an antiqua point ). In Göttingen in 1934 Weber and other staunch National Socialists (like his friend Oswald Teichmüller ) had a dispute with the designated new head of the Göttingen Mathematical Institute, Helmut Hasse , who also sympathized with the National Socialists, but which Weber and his co-thinkers were not considered to be politically reliable held. Weber refused to give him the keys to the institute, but was unable to assert himself in the ministry because they wanted a respected mathematician like Hasse in Göttingen. Weber could no longer stay in Göttingen. In the summer of 1935 he received the substitute professorship in Frankfurt for Carl Ludwig Siegel, who was in Princeton (who then tried to return to Frankfurt) and in the winter of 1935 went to Berlin as a lecturer. In Heidelberg he represented 1935-37 before he went back to Ludwig Bieberbach in Berlin, where he was an associate professor in 1938 and an adjunct professor from 1939 to 1945.

Weber was a member of the SA , but did not join the NSDAP until May 1, 1933 , although he had already sympathized with the National Socialists. In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . In 1945 Weber was fired because of his involvement in the NSDAP. He was involved in the publication of the journal Deutsche Mathematik and published a book on Pell's equation in its booklet .

During the Second World War , like Teichmüller under Erich Hüttenhain , he worked as a cryptanalyst in the encryption department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW / Chi), where, among other things, he managed to break encrypted Japanese and Polish messages . According to Wolfgang Franz , however, he could no longer follow the later changes to the Japanese system.

From 1946 Weber worked as a publisher's proofreader in Hamburg and from 1951 as a teacher at the private school "Institut Dr. Brechtefeld" in Hamburg. He left a detailed manuscript (written before he was drafted in 1940) about his dispute with Hasse, which serves as an important source for the events in Göttingen at that time.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Math. Annalen 102 (1930) pp. 740-767.
  2. ↑ Segal: Mathematicians under the Nazi , Princeton University Press, Princeton 2003, p. 128. The anecdote is attributed to Siegel by Norbert Schappacher.
  3. ↑ According to Peter Scherk Weber was introduced to National Socialism by Teichmüller, Segal Mathematicians under the Nazis , p. 447, note 85.
  4. ↑ Segal, p. 129.
  5. ^ The Pell equation (= German Mathematics Supplements 1 ). Hirzel, Leipzig 1939.
  6. ↑ Christos Triantafyllopoulos: Professor Wolfgang Franz and OKW / Chi's mathematical research department 2014
  7. ↑ Frode Weierud and Sandy Zabell : German mathematicians and cryptology in WWII. Cryptologia, doi: 10.1080 / 01611194.2019.1600076 , p. 10.
  8. ↑ Federal Archives Berlin R 4901 / 10.091.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weber, Werner Ludwig Eduard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberstein
DATE OF DEATH 2nd February 1975
Place of death Hamburg