Stephan Cohn-Vossen

Stefan Cohn- Vossen ( born May 28, 1902 in Breslau, † June 25, 1936 in Moscow ) was a German mathematician who worked on geometry.

Life and work

Stefan Cohn- Vossen 1924 doctorate at the University of Wroclaw in Adolf Kneser ( Singular points of real, simple families of curves whose differential equation is given ). In 1929 he completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen and was umhabilitieren 1930 at the University of Cologne. In 1930 he became a lecturer in Cologne.

In 1933, he was relieved by the Nazis as a Jew of his office and went first to Locarno in Switzerland. In 1934 he was teacher in Zurich. In the same year he went to the Soviet Union, where he became in 1935 a professor at the University of Leningrad, and in 1936 in Moscow. He was also a research associate of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He died of pneumonia.

Cohn- Vossen dealt in connection to Wilhelm Blaschke eg with rigidity properties of surfaces, and later especially with differential geometry " in the large". In 1932 he published his well-known, kept at accessible level book with David Hilbert Descriptive geometry, which is still regarded as one of the best introductory geometry books.