Wilhelm Magnus

Hans Heinrich Wilhelm Magnus, he published as Wilhelm Magnus, ( born February 5, 1907 in Berlin, † 15 October 1990 in New York City ) was a German mathematician who worked mainly with group theory, special functions and mathematical physics.

Life

Wilhelm Magnus studied after graduating from high school in Tübingen 1925-1930 mathematics and physics at the Universities of Tübingen and Frankfurt am Main and was awarded his doctorate in 1930 with Max Dehn. In 1933 he was habilitated in Frankfurt and was until 1938 a lecturer at the University of Frankfurt. A fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, he was 1934/35 at Princeton University. From 1939 he worked at the Albertina in Königsberg in 1940 and moved to the Technische Hochschule Berlin -Charlottenburg, where he was in 1942 appointed extraordinary professor. He was also employed in the research department of the navy Berlin -Wannsee. Since he refused to join the Nazi Party, but his career came to a halt. He was concerned at this time with mathematical panel works for the special functions of mathematical physics, which later zugutekam him in the USA. In 1944 he was appointed professor at the University of Konigsberg.

From 1946 to 1949 Magnus was a full professor at the University of Göttingen; 1947/48 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Technology, Pasadena (now CalTech ) in Kalifornia, USA. In 1950 he moved to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University and in 1973 to a professorship at the Polytechnic Institute of New York, where he became professor emeritus in 1978.

Work

His main field of research was the combinatorial group theory. In America, he was from 1948 employees of the Bateman Manuscript Project of Caltech ( the posthumous manuscripts on special functions of Harry Bateman ), whose chief editor Arthur Erdélyi was ( more employees were Fritz upper Hettinger and Francesco Tricomi ). He also dealt with functions of mathematical physics such as the solutions of the Mathieu equation and the Hill equation.

In 1932 he proved the insolubility of the word problem for groups with a relation.

He was considered an outstanding teacher, had numerous doctoral students, including Fritz upper Hettinger, Friedrich Wilhelm Schäfke, Joan Birman, Bruce Chandler, Abe Shenitzer, Seymour Lipschutz, Harry Hochstadt and Herbert Keller, and received the 1969 Great Teacher Award from New York University. He was 1934 Rockefeller Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow in 1969 and in 1973/74 Fulbright -Hayes Senior Research Scholar. He was a member of the German Mathematical Society from 1932 to 1934 and from 1938 until his death.

Writings

• Collected Papers. Springer 1984.
• With Israel Grossman: Groups and their graphs. Klett Verlag in 1971, first in English by Random House in 1964.
• Hill's equation. Wiley 1966.
• With Fritz upper Hettinger: Formulas and theorems for the special functions of mathematical physics. Springer 1943, 2nd Aufl.1948, 3rd Edition (English) 1966.
• With Fritz upper Hettinger: Applications of elliptic functions in physics and engineering. Springer 1949.
• Noneuclidean tessellations and Their groups. Academic Press 1974.
• Karrass with Abraham, David Solitar: Combinatorial group theory - presentations of groups in terms of generators and relations. Interscience, New York 1966, 2nd edition, Dover 1976.
• Bruce Chandler: The History of Combinatorial Group Theory. A Case Study in the History of Ideas. Springer 1982.