Erich Schönhardt

Erich Schönhardt ( born June 15, 1891 in Stuttgart, † November 20, 1979 ) was a German mathematician. He achieved fame by discovering the Schönhardt polyhedron, the simplest non-convex polyhedron that can not be broken without the insertion of additional vertices in tetrahedra.

Life

Schönhardt studied at the University of Stuttgart and received his doctorate at the University of Tübingen, 1920. He wrote his dissertation on Schottky groups with Ludwig Maurer. In 1923 he habilitated at the University of Tübingen, where he was from 1927 not tenured, associate professor. During his studies he became a member of the fraternity Alemannia Stuttgart.

In the 1930s he was a faculty leader in Tübingen. In this time, the displacement of the mathematician Erich Kamke in retirement falls because he had married a Jewish woman. 1933 Schönhardt the NSDAP had joined.

At the University of Stuttgart from 1936 he was a full professor and from 1939 to 1942 Rector of the University. After 1945 Schönhardt was dismissed because of his Nazi past.

Works

• About the Schottkysche group in the hyperelliptic case, 1920
• About the decomposition of Dreieckspolyedern into tetrahedrons, 1927