Hermann Brunn

Hermann Karlsbrunn ( born August 1, 1862 in Rome, † September 20, 1939 in Munich) was a German mathematician who dealt with convex geometry.

Brunn was the son of the archaeologist Heinrich Brunn, and as this was then secretary of the Royal Prussian Institute of Archaeology, Brunn was born in the Capitol. From 1865 he was in Munich, where he from 1872 to 1880 the Maximilian school attended. Then he studied mathematics, including Alfred Pringsheim, Physics and Arabic at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich, which he completed with the teaching certificate. 1884/85 studied Brunn in Berlin under Karl Weierstrass, Leopold Kronecker and Lazarus Fuchs. He was, however, little influenced by his teachers, and bowed to the geometry in the sense of Jakob Steiner. In 1887 he received his doctorate in Munich ( About ovals and Eiflächen ) and 1889 he habilitated with the work on curves without inflection points. In 1896 he became librarian at the Technical University of Munich, where he was chief librarian in 1912 and 1920, Library Director. Since 1905 Brunn was an honorary professor at the University of Munich. In 1927, he went into retirement.

In his dissertation Brunn laid the foundation of a theory of convex bodies, which is named after him and Hermann Minkowski, became known as Brunn - Minkowski theory. Here also the Brunn - Minkowski inequality is named after the two. Minkowski in 1903, he learned to know.

Under the influence of Walther von Dyck, he also dealt with topology.

Brunn was also a translator, for example, in 1934, published Gongora plant Soledades, and published in 1940 the book of poems Survived me happy hours! . He gave out his father's writings and wrote an autobiography in 1913. Brunn published memories of the philosopher Julius Langbehn, his father, as well as a landscape and portrait painter Karl Haider.