Friedrich Prym
Friedrich Emil Fritz Prym ( born September 28, 1841 in Düren, † December 15, 1915 in Bonn ) was a German mathematician who dealt almost exclusively with function theory.
Life and work
Prym was one of six children of the cloth manufacturer Richard Prym (1814-1894) and the Ernestine Schoeller, a niece of Leopold Schoeller born, and visited as well as his brother who later Orientalist Eugene Prym, the pin Gymnasium in Düren.
Prym then started in the winter semester in 1859 to study mathematics in Berlin where he attended lectures Elwin Bruno Christoffel among others, with whom he became friends. 1860/61, he interrupted his studies because he had represented his ill father in the management of the factory, and then studied chemistry with Robert Bunsen in 1861 in Heidelberg. In the same year he went on the advice of Christoffel for two semesters to Göttingen to listen function theory and partial differential equations with Bernhard Riemann. The encounter with Riemann was a defining experience. The (then about Göttingen addition, less common ) methods Riemann he also used in his dissertation, Theoria nova functionum ultraellipticarum. Pars prior via ultra elliptic functions, which he then filed in Berlin at the number theorist Ernst Eduard Kummer. 1863 was awarded a doctorate with honors.
After his studies he began a banking traineeship with his uncle in Vienna, but dealt more with math, let the lectures Riemann on partial differential equations in Had Dorffs elaboration in Vienna circulated and published in the Notices of the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 1864 an essay on the extension of the methods of his dissertation on hyperelliptic functions. For ideas, he got by Riemann himself, who recovered in Padua in the spring of 1865 by his illness. In the same year he applied for a professorship in Zurich, which he received on the mediation of also teaching there Christoffel also - his father's factory was later resolved. His published in Zurich treatise on hyperelliptic functions was that of the Riemann - Roch Gustav student help to make Riemann's ideas on abelian functions ( generalizations of elliptic functions) further mathematical circles of course. Riemann and Roch died in 1866 of tuberculosis.
From 1869 he was a professor in Würzburg ( on the recommendation of previously also here from Zurich exchanged Rudolf Clausius ), which he remained until his retirement in 1909. He was twice Dean and 1897/98 President of the University. His students there included Adolf Krazer, Robert Haußner and his close associate and successor in Würzburg Georg rust. With him, he summed up his work in 1911 in the monograph Theory of Prymschen functions together first -order following the creations of Riemann. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him in 1872 as a corresponding member.
Prym died of shingles in following a hernia operation. According to him, Prym varieties are named.
Prym was married since 1867 and had four daughters. One of them, Erna Prym (* April 8, 1883, † October 23, 1973 ), was married to the German gynecologist and obstetrician Otto von Franqué. His daughter Frieda was the wife of the physiologist Adolf Fick, their son Rudolf Fick was born on 24 February 1866 in Zurich and became a professor of anatomy.