Gerhard Kowalewski
Gerhard Hermann Waldemar Kowalewski ( born March 27, 1876 in Alt- Järshagen, Pomerania, † February 21, 1950 in Graefelfing in Munich) was a German mathematician.
Life
His parents were teachers and school board Prussian Leonhard Julius Kowalewski († 1929) and Maria, born Pommerening († 1926). His brother was the Königsberg professor of philosophy, experimental psychologist and mathematician Arnold Christian Felix Kowalewski ( 1873-1945 ).
The school in Lobau in West Prussia and the Humanistic Gymnasium in Graudenz he could shorten and began at the age of 17 years at the University of Königsberg his studies in classical philology, philosophy, and mathematics ( with David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski and G. Stäckel ) and astronomy ( Hermann von Struve and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Peters). After three semesters, he moved to Greifswald and from 1896 he studied in Leipzig with Sophus Lie and Friedrich Engel. In 1898 he was phil with the work over a class of transformation groups of a four-dimensional manifold to Dr.. doctorate, and the following year he completed his habilitation in Leipzig. Here he and Heinrich Liebmann appeared as a lecturer in the faculty.
In 1901 he was A.O. Professor at the University of Greifswald and from 1904 to 1909 at the University of Bonn. In addition, he participated in the Graduate School of Cologne a lecturer in Actuarial Science. In 1909 he was appointed professor at the Prague German TH and 1912 German at the University of Prague.
When he joined the TH Dresden in 1920, he took with him his two best pupils Amélie Weizsäcker and Josef Fuhrich. Here the Mathematical Colloquium was founded on his initiative, which he presided with Max Lagally Otto (1881-1945) and Walter Ludwig ( 1876-1946 ). His pupils included William Threlfall, Herbert Seifert, Hilmar Wendt (1913-2002), Alfred Kneschke and many teachers of mathematics and science in secondary schools direction. He was committed to the advancement of women at the university. He signed in November 1933, the commitment of the professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler. When he was employed in 1935 as rector, he quickly fell " from grace " and was replaced before the two- year term in February 1937, on leave " at his own request " by the Reich Minister of Education. 1938, initiated proceedings against him "because of infidelity ", from which he ultimately unpunished but emerged.
After he was suspended in Dresden, he became in 1939 a professorship at the German University of Prague, which he lost in the war of 1945. In 1946 he fled to Munich, where he held teaching positions at the Technical University Munich and the Philosophical- Theological University of Regensburg.
He conducted research in the fields of the theory of transformation groups and the natural geometry. The term natural equation ( and natural geometry) goes back to him.
He was a member of the Bohemian and the Saxon Academy of Sciences and recipient of the Lobachevsky diploma.
Publications (selection)
- Newton's treatise on the quadrature of curves. (1704). Translation from the Latin; 1908
- Lectures on natural geometry.; Ernesto Cesàro
- About Bolzano Nichtdifferenzierbare Continuous function.
- Great Mathematicians: A walk through the history of mathematics from antiquity to modern times. J. F. Lehmann, Munich / Berlin, 1937.
- Inventory and change. My life memories at the same time a contribution to the recent history of mathematics. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1950.