Karl Menninger (mathematics)

Karl Menninger ( born October 6, 1898 in Frankfurt am Main, † October 2, 1963 in Heppenheim ) was a German historian of mathematics and author of mathematical fiction books.

Life

Karl Menninger was the son of a railway official and went to Darmstadt to the secondary school. From 1917 he studied mathematics, physics, philosophy and geography in Heidelberg, Darmstadt ( Darmstadt ), Munich and Frankfurt am Main, where he received his doctorate in 1921 at Ludwig Bieberbach ( The problem of mathematics with Bernhard Bolzano). After teaching examination he was from 1923 until his death in 1963 a high school teacher of mathematics, physics and art in Heppenheim on the mountain road. From 1936 he was teacher, and from 1955 a senior teacher. Since the 1920s, he held radio lectures on mathematics and began in 1931 with the publication of popular books on mathematics. During the Second World War, he taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Giessen.

Menninger is mainly for his book translated into many languages ​​numeral and digit - known A cultural history of the number of 1934, which is about the history of mathematical notation in the world. Until shortly before his death he was working on a book about the history of perspective.

In 1957 he received the Liebig Medal of the University of Giessen.

Writings

  • Computational tricks: Funny and advantageous Computing - a teaching and manual for daily computing, 12th edition, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1983 ( first 1931)
  • Ali Baba and the 39 camels, 11th edition, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1982 ( first 1940)
  • Number word and numeral - a cultural history of numbers, Wroclaw, Hirt 1934, 2nd revised and expanded edition Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht in 1957/58, in two volumes, 3rd edition, 1979 ( English translation 1969 Number Words and Number Symbols, Cambridge, Mass., MIT. Press)
  • Mathematics and art, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1959
  • Mathematics in your world - from its spirit and its way of thinking, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1958
  • Space and number - mathematical forays, Ullsteinhaus 1960
  • Pot Belly, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1961 ( mathematical poems, drawings by W. Menninger )
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