Ludwig Hopf

Ludwig Hopf ( born October 23, 1884 in Nuremberg, † December 21, 1939 in Dublin ) was a German mathematician.

Life and work

Hopf studied 1902-1909 Physics and Mathematics in Berlin and Munich. In Munich, Hopf was one of the students Arnold Sommerfeld, where he also received his doctorate. Hopf became an assistant to Albert Einstein and came in 1911 as assistant to the then full professor of mechanics at the Technical University of Aachen. Theodore von Kármán took over the chair. In Kármán Hopf habilitated in 1914 and taught until 1916 as a lecturer. In 1923 he was appointed professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at the Technical University of Aachen.

Already in the spring of 1933, now also began at RWTH Aachen Denunziationsmaßnahmen the student body. Here were the ASTA (General Student Committee ) and the student leaders the Denunziationsausschuss this extra- employed consisting of Hermann Bonin, Hubert Hoffmann, Felix Rötscher, Adolf Wallichs, and Robert Hans Wentzel get over it releases, which were or supposedly the lecturers and professors of non-Aryan descent or actually had an undesirable political setting. Hopf should now according to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service due to his Jewish heritage together with the other non-Aryan professors Otto Blumenthal, Arthur Guttmann, Walter Maximilian Fuchs, Theodore von Kármán, Paul Ernst Levy, Karl Walter Mautner, Alfred Meusel, Leopold Karl Pick Rudolf Ruer, Hermann Salmang and Ludwig Strauss be withdrawn from September 1933, the teaching license. Despite a Bittschreibens his acting rector Paul X to the Reich Commissioner in the Ministry of Education, Bernhard Rust, to be able to hold him still, Hopf was finally released on January 22, 1934.

1939 Hopf received an appointment to the University of Cambridge and emigrated to England. Shortly thereafter, he went to Trinity College in Dublin. On December 21, 1939, he died in Dublin of thyroid failure.

533241
de