Otto Toeplitz

Otto Toeplitz ( born August 1, 1881 in Breslau, † February 15, 1940 in Jerusalem ) was a German mathematician of Jewish origin.

Life and work

Toeplitz came from a Jewish family Lissa, who had already produced several mathematics teachers. Both his father Emil Toeplitz (* October 15, 1852 in Lissa, † August 22 1917 in Breslau ) and his grandfather Julius Toeplitz ( born December 5, 1825 Lissa; † August 4, 1897 in Lissa ) taught mathematics at a high school (Comenius -Gymnasium to Lissa and John school Breslau). His father Prof. Emil Toeplitz was the beginning of the 20th century editor of the yearbook philologists Kunzes calendar. This was followed by the German philologist Karl Kunze, Lissa, (1840-1895) developed in 1895 on behalf of the German philologists Association and since then appears in the annual edition. Otto grew up in Breslau, and began studying mathematics there after high school at Jacob Rosanes and Rudolf Sturm. In 1905 he received his doctorate with a thesis on algebraic geometry. From his Breslau he was friends with Max Born and Richard Courant.

1906 Toeplitz went to Göttingen, where he habilitated with the work the following year for the transformation of multitudes of bilinear forms of unendlichvielen variables and then taught as a lecturer. Upon his arrival, David Hilbert was busy with his theory of integral equations, especially the spectral limited symmetric operators and Toeplitz wrote several papers on this topic ( structures of linear algebra in the spectral theory, invention of Toeplitz operators, etc.), where he was already with his students Ernst Hellinger worked, with whom he became friends. In 1913 he went as an adjunct professor at the Christian -Albrechts -University of Kiel. In 1920 he was appointed a full professor there. Together with Ernst Hellinger Toeplitz presented at this time an article on integral equations for the prestigious Encyclopedia of mathematical sciences ready, which was published in 1927. 1928 took over as successor to the Toeplitz surveyor Eduard Study a chair at the University of Bonn, where he had a much higher number of listeners as in Kiel. In Bonn, he was a friend of Felix Hausdorff.

In 1911 he introduced Toeplitz matrices have applications in the theory of Fourier transformation in crystallography and the development of fast algorithms.

Despite the racist " Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of 1933 Toeplitz could teach until 1935. Then he was relieved of his duties as a Jew and retired. After his retirement he worked as head of the Jewish community in Bonn and taught Jewish school children. He founded a Jewish school and organized as head of the university department of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, especially the emigration of Jewish students in the United States. Stunned, he captured the result of depositions and the suicides of professors in index cards. Beginning in February 1939 forced him to the rising pressure of persecution to emigrate to the mandate under British administration of Palestine. A year after leaving he died in Jerusalem.

In the 1930s, he worked with his students Gottfried Köthe on its own theory of high dimensional spaces since it was Stefan Banachs theory too abstract. To this end, he transferred ideas of finite-dimensional linear algebra, as in its work at the beginning of the century in Göttingen.

Toeplitz was a passionate teacher and was coined here and in his interest in the history of mathematics greatly from Felix Klein. Specific expression found this in his maths teaching colloquium for prospective teachers in Kiel. In 1926, he stopped on the naturalist conference in Dusseldorf at the time a much-publicized speech on the Analysis classes, where he pleaded for the historical method, which reconstructs the discovery of transition ( " genetic" ). He wrote a book about the history of the Analysis: The development of calculus: A Genetic Approach (1949 posthumously edited in German and by Gottfried Köthe published). Furthermore Toeplitz interested in the relationship between classical Greek mathematics and philosophy and was a frequent visitor to the mathematics seminar in Frankfurt, where his friend Hellinger worked since 1914. He also had in Kiel a private seminar on Greek mathematics with Heinrich Scholz and Julius Stenzel. With the latter, and Otto Neugebauer, he founded the magazine "Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics". With Heinrich Behnke 1932, he founded the still existing today Mathematics and Physics semester reports which are primarily aimed at mathematics teachers.

Toeplitz (also to criticism ) and helpful described by Heinrich Behnke as friendly, open. He was very interested in his students, led to many in-depth discussions in a friendly atmosphere and knew them exactly.

With Hans Rademacher 1930 he wrote a widely popular introduction to the mathematics " From numbers and figures " in which, inter alia, elementary number theory, minima / maxima problems, polyhedra, topology, the four color theorem and geometry problems such as curves of constant diameter are treated. The book grew out of public lectures.

One of his sons, Uri ( Erich ) Toeplitz was a professional flutist and co-founder of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.