Iris Runge

Iris Anna Runge ( born June 1, 1888 in Hannover, † January 27, 1966 in Ulm) was a German applied mathematician and physicist.

Life and work

Iris Runge was the eldest of six children of mathematician Carl Runge. She studied from 1907 at the University of Göttingen physics, mathematics and geography, with the aim of becoming a teacher. She heard, among other things with her father and a semester at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld, which led to a first publication. After graduation ( senior teacher exam ) in 1912, she taught at several schools ( lyceum Göttingen, Oberlyzeum Kippenberg at Bremen), but went in 1918 returned to the University to study chemistry, where they 1920, the supplementary examination for the teaching profession took off and his doctorate in 1921 with Gustav Tammann was (over diffusion in the solid state ). In the transition phase after the First World War she was also active for the SPD in the election campaign, the then prevailed women's suffrage. The party she joined in 1929. In 1920, she was a teacher at the Schule Schloss Salem.

In 1923 she gave up the teaching profession and worked as an industrial mathematician at Osram. A colleague of her was there Ellen Lax, who received his doctorate in 1919 with Walther Nernst. There they dealt according to the company's products ( light bulbs, radio tubes), among others, with heat conduction problems, electron emission from the tubes and statistics for quality control in mass production, what they also co-authored a then standard textbook. In 1929, she was appointed to the top official. From 1929 she was a radio tubes in the department and, after the annexation of the department at Telefunken in 1939 with the new group to the resolution of the laboratory 1945.

After 1945, she taught at the adult education center Spandau and was student assistant at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1947 she qualified as a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin ( inaugural lecture about the noise of electron tubes ), where she was adopted on the basis of their published works habilitation thesis. In 1947, she received a teaching job and was until 1949 assistant at the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Humboldt University in Frederick possible. In November 1949, she was appointed as a lecturer and in July 1950 she became a professor with tenure. She was there one of three professors at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. As of March 1949, she also worked part-time again for Telefunken. 1952 Emeritus them. At the Humboldt University, where she held 1952 Lectures on Theoretical Physics until the summer semester She lived until 1965 in West Berlin and then moved to her brother to Ulm.

Translated the book by Richard Courant ( who was married to one of her sisters ) and Herbert Robbins What is Mathematics? and wrote a biography of her father.

Writings

• With Richard Becker, Hubert C. Plaut applications of mathematical statistics to problems of mass production, Springer Verlag 1927
• Carl Runge and his scientific work. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1949 ( Reprint from Abh Akad Wiss. Göttingen)