Wolfgang Döblin

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circa 1938

Wolfgang Döblin , also Wolfgang Doeblin or Vincent Doblin (born March 17, 1915 in Berlin ; † June 21, 1940 in Housseras , Département Vosges ), the second son of the German writer Alfred Döblin , was a Franco-German mathematician.

Life

During his time at high school, Wolfgang Döblin attended the student courses at the German University of Politics (Berlin), whose diploma he wanted to obtain. However, after arguments with Nazi party members - Döblin was of Jewish origin and saw himself as a socialist - he had to leave the university. In 1933 the Döblin family fled from the National Socialists to Zurich , then to Paris . At the Sorbonne he resumed his mathematics and physics studies, which he had begun in Zurich, in October 1933. After completing his studies, he conducted research on probability theory under the guidance of Maurice Fréchet . Since his student days, the Döblin family had been on friendly terms with the family of the Parisian probability theorist Paul Lévy , who played an important role in Wolfgang Döblin's career. He soon achieved highly regarded results, especially in the theory of the Markov processes .

In 1936 Wolfgang Döblin became a French citizen. Shortly after receiving his doctorate in 1938, he had to do two years of military service. He declined a career as a reserve officer and therefore remained a simple infantry soldier. In the army he mostly called himself 'Vincent Doblin'; he drew his scientific work with "Wolfgang Doeblin". During his military service, since the end of August 1939 as a telephone operator in the 291st Infantry Regiment near Givet in the Ardennes, he continued his mathematical research unabated; Even during the so-called "Drôle de guerre" he continued to deal with problems of probability theory, including Kolmogorow's equation. In February 1940, he sent his results to the Paris Académie des Sciences in a "sealed envelope" . The "sealed envelope" procedure is used to store unpublished scientific works and discoveries for the purpose of protecting copyright.

A short time later his regiment came to the Saar front, right on the German border. In the Battle of France Döblin fought on the Saar and in Lorraine and was awarded the croix de guerre .

After his unit was worn out in June 1940 and France's surrender to the Germans was imminent, Wolfgang Döblin separated from his comrades on the Col de la Chipotte in the Vosges on the night of June 20-21 and hid on a farm in the Housseras village. When a German vanguard arrived, he made his earlier announcement true and shot himself to avoid being captured by the Wehrmacht. He was first buried as an unknown soldier in the village cemetery; identification took place in 1944. His parents were also buried in Housseras in 1957.

Wolfgang Döblin's achievements in the field of probability theory only became known to a wide audience after the publication of the "sealed envelope" in 2000 by the Académie des Sciences in Paris . According to a procedure that has been in use since the 17th century, a “sealed envelope” may only be opened by the author himself or, in the event of his death, at the request of his heirs, otherwise only 100 years after his death, by a commission of the Académie des Sciences. After Wolfgang Döblin's death, the envelope was forgotten because he only mentioned it in a subordinate sentence in a letter to his doctoral supervisor, the mathematician Maurice Fréchet . It was only in the 1980s that mathematician and science historian Bernard Bru stumbled upon this mention and did some research in the academy's archives. The content is regarded by specialists as the culmination of Döblin's work. In 2002, during renovation work at a French university, further manuscripts, preparatory work and working documents by Wolfgang Döblin turned up.

With the writing Sur l'équation de Kolmogoroff , which was only published in 2000, he anticipated the results on stochastic integration by Itō Kiyoshi . In May 2006, the city of Paris honored Alfred and Wolfgang Döblin with a plaque on the family's former home, on Henri-Delormel Square, in the 14th district .

bibliography

Numbering, [i] for articles, [CRi] for messages in Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences (CRAS), after Lindvall 1991 (see literature). No. 14, the “sealed envelope”, according to Bru / Yor 2002 (see literature) added.

items

1. Le cas discontinu des probabilités en chaîne. In: Publ. Fac. Sci. Univ. Masaryk, 236, 3-13, 1937, 592

2. Sur le cas continuity of probabilities en chaîne. In: Rend. Accad. Lincei, 25, 1937, 170-176

3. Sur les chaînes à liaisons complètes (avec R. FORTET). In: Bull. Soc. Math. France, 65, 1937, 132-148

4. Sur l'equation de Smoluchowsky. In: Praktika de l'Académie d'Athènes, 12, 1937, 116–119

5. Sur les propriétés asymptotiques de mouvements régis par certains types de chaînes simples. In: Thèse Sci. Math. Paris, Bucarest: Imprimerie Centrale. 1938, et Bull. Soc. Math. Roumaine Sci. 39 (1), 1937, 57-115, 39 (2) 1937, 3-61

6. Sur l'équation matricielle A (t + s) = A (t) A (s) et ses applications aux probabilités en chaîne. In: Bull. Sci. Math., 52, 1940, 21-32, 64 1938 35-37

7. Sur two problems de M. Kolmogoroff concernant les chaînes dénombrables. In: Bull. Soc. Math. France, 66, 1938, 210-220

8. Exposé de la Théorie des chaînes simples constantes de Markoff à un nombre fini d'états. In: Rev. Math. Union Interbalkanique, 2, 1938, 77-105

9. Sur les sommes d'un grand nombre de variables indépendantes. In: Bull. Sci. Math., 63, 1939, 23-32, 35-64

10. Sur certains mouvements aléatoires discontinus. In: Skand. Aktuarietidskr., 22, 1939, 211–222

11. Remarques on the theory métrique des fractions continues. In: Compositio Math., 7, 1940, 353-371

12. Éléments d'une théorie générale des chaînes simples constantes de Markoff. In: Ann École Norm. Sup., 57, 1940, 61-111

13. Sur l'ensemble des puissances d'une loi de probabilité. In: Studia Math., 9, 71-96 (1940). Reproduit with a supplement to Ann. École Normal Sup. 63, 1947, 317-350

14. Sur l'équation de Kolmogoroff, Pli cacheté déposé le 26 février 1940, ouvert le 18 may 2000. In: CR Acad. Sci. Paris, Series I, 331, 2000, 1031-1187

Notifications in Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences

(PDF at Gallica )

literature

  • Bernard Bru, Marc Yor: Comments on the life and mathematical legacy of Wolfgang Doeblin . In: Finance and Stochastics . 6th year, 2002, p. 3–47 , doi : 10.1007 / s780-002-8399-0 (English).
  • Wioletta Magdalena Ruszel: Wolfgang Doeblin - pioneer of the Itô calculus . Thesis. University of Potsdam, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute for Mathematics, 2006 ( online [PDF]).
  • Torgny Lindvall: W. Doeblin 1915-1940 . In: The Annals of Probability . tape 19 , no. 3 , 1991, pp. 929-934 , doi : 10.1214 / aop / 1176990329 (English).
  • Peter Imkeller, Sylvie Roelly: The rediscovery of a mathematician: Wolfgang Döblin . In: Communications of the German Mathematicians Association . tape 15 , 2007, p. 154–159 ( online reprint in: Postprints of the University of Potsdam, Mathematical and Natural Science Series, Volume 34).
  • Harry Cohn (Ed.): Doeblin and modern probability . American Mathematical Society, Providence 1993, ISBN 978-0-8218-5149-4 (English, contains Bru's biography based on Döblin's correspondence).
  • Paul Lévy: W. Doeblin (1915-1940) . In: Revue Histoire Sci. Appl. tape 8 , 1955, pp. 107-115 .
  • Marc Petit: The lost equation. In the footsteps of Wolfgang and Alfred Döblin (“L'équation de Kolmogoroff”) . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main. 2005, ISBN 3-8218-5749-8 .

Film and radio documentation

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ mémoire des hommes → “Vincent Doblin”
  2. ↑ www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Döblin, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doblin, Vincent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-French mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1940
Place of death Housseras , Vosges department