Karl Menger

Karl Menger ( born January 13, 1902 in Vienna, † 5 October 1985 in Chicago) was an Austrian mathematician. He was the son of the economist Carl Menger.

Menger worked in the field of algebra, topology, curve and dimension theory, and dealt with the general teaching of space and spatial structures. He also dealt with ethical issues and formal studies of human relationships. Become particularly well known is the so-called Menger Sponge, which was named after him. Menger studied with Hans Hahn and his doctorate in 1924 at the University of Vienna. Together with Arthur Cayley, he founded the distance geometry.

1927 Menger could prove a statement from the field of graph theory on the relationship of disjoint paths and separating vertex sets in a graph, which became known as Menger's theorem. Furthermore, the set of Menger - Nöbeling about embedding finite, compact, metric spaces in Euclidean spaces suitable connected with his name.

From 1928 to 1936 Menger worked as a university professor of geometry in Vienna and was a member of the Vienna Circle. Between 1937 and 1946 he was professor of mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana (USA), from 1946 professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

In 1932 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich ( Newer methods and problems of geometry).