Hilda geiringer von mises biography templates
After receiving her first degree, Geiringer continued her study of mathematics at Vienna, working under Wirtinger for her doctorate. This was awarded in for a thesis on Fourier series in two variables. In Geiringer moved to Berlin where she was employed as an assistant to von Mises in the Institute of Applied Mathematics. He obtained his doctorate in working under Schur and went on to work for the Reichspost in Berlin applying mathematical methods to telephone connections.
After the divorce Geiringer continued working for von Mises and at the same time brought up her child on her own. Although trained as a pure mathematician, Geiringer moved towards applied mathematics to fit in with the work being undertaken at the Institute of Applied Mathematics. Her work at this time was on statistics, in particular probability theory , and also on the mathematical theory of plasticity.
She submitted a thesis for her habilitation to the University of Berlin but it was not immediately accepted. Siegmund-Schultze writes in [ 3 ] :- The controversy surrounding Hilda Geiringer's application for Habilitation at the University of Berlin - sheds some light on the struggle of 'applied mathematics' for cognitive and institutional independence.
The controversy and Geiringer's unpublished reminiscences reveal the decisive influence of Richard von Mises The debate over Geiringer's theses for Habilitation opens up a chapter of the history of mathematical statistics, namely, expansions of a discrete distribution with an infinite number of values in a series in successive derivatives of the Poisson distribution with respect to the parameter.
On 30 January Hitler came to power and on 7 April the Civil Service Law provided the means of removing Jewish teachers from the universities, and of course remove those of Jewish descent from other roles. All civil servants who were not of Aryan descent having one grandparent of the Jewish religion made someone non-Aryan were to be retired.
Under this law, Geiringer lost the right to teach at the university in December In fact she had been proposed for appointment to the position of extraordinary professor in but the proposal had been put on hold after the Civil Service Law came into effect in April of that year. Reload to refresh your session. You signed out in another tab or window.
You switched accounts on another tab or window. Dismiss alert. Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings Fork 4 Star 3. Latest commit. Her parents had married while her father was working in Vienna as a textile manufacturer. While still in high school, Geiringer showed great mathematical ability. Her parents supported her financially so that she could study mathematics at the University of Vienna.
After receiving her first degree, Geiringer continued her study of mathematics in Vienna. She received her Ph. In this same year, she married Felix Pollaczek who, like Geiringer, was born in Vienna into a Jewish family and had studied in Berlin. Pollaczek obtained his doctorate in and went on to work for the Reichspost Postal service in Berlin, applying mathematical methods to telephone connections.
Hilda and Felix had a child, Magda, in , but their marriage broke up. After the divorce, Geiringer continued working for von Mises and at the same time raised her child. Although trained as a pure mathematician , Geiringer moved towards applied mathematics to fit in with the work being undertaken at the Institute of Applied Mathematics. Her work at this time was on statistics , probability theory , and also on the mathematical theory of plasticity.
She submitted a thesis for her Habilitation to qualify as an instructor at the University of Berlin , but it was not immediately accepted. Geiringer lost the right to teach at the university in December This law disqualified Jews from serving as teachers, professors, judges, or in other government positions. Geiringer left Germany after she was dismissed from the University of Berlin, and, with Magda, she went to Brussels.
There she was appointed to the Institute of Mechanics and began to apply mathematics to the theory of vibrations. In , Geiringer followed von Mises to Istanbul where she had been appointed as Professor of Mathematics and continued to research in applied mathematics, statistics, and probability theory. While in Turkey , Geiringer became intrigued with the basic principles of genetics formulated by the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel.
Arguably Hilda Geiringer was one of the pioneers of what emerged as the burgeoning disciplines bearing such names as molecular genetics , human genetics , plant genetics , heredity in man, genomics , bioinformatics , biotechnology , biomedical engineering , and genetic engineering , among others. The world has not given sufficient credit to this intelligent woman's pioneering work mainly because it was done in Istanbul and published in Turkish journals.
In addition to her lecturing duties at Bryn Mawr College, Geiringer undertook, as part of the war effort, classified work for the United States National Research Council. In , after working for a year as editor of the Fortschritte der Mathematik , she accepted an academic position at the University of Berlin, working as the assistant to Richard von Mises in the Institute of Applied Mathematics.
Hilda geiringer von mises biography templates
That same year, she married fellow mathematician Felix Pollaczek, with whom she had a daughter, Magda, the following year. In , they divorced, and as a single parent Geiringer pursued her career. After six years at the university, she was recognized for her outstanding teaching as well as for her important research in probability theory and the mathematical development of plasticity theory, which led to the Geiringer equations for plane plastic deformations In , when Hitler came into power and all Jewish educators in Berlin lost their jobs, Geiringer fled to Turkey, where, after learning the language, she obtained a job lecturing at Istanbul University.
By , however, even Turkey was not safe, and she and her daughter came to the United States. Shortly after her arrival, she secured a position as a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College. In , Geiringer married Richard von Mises, her former employer at the University of Berlin and now a full professor at Harvard University. She moved to Massachusetts in , to chair the mathematics department at Wheaton College in Norton, a position she held until her retirement.
In addition to her demanding teaching schedule, Geiringer continued to work on her own research into statistics, particularly the mathematical basis of Mendelian genetics. When von Mises died in , Geiringer received a grant from the Office of Naval Research to complete his work at Harvard. In , with Geoffrey Ludford, she finished one of her husband's incomplete manuscripts, published as Mathematical Theory of Compressible Fluid Flow.
After her retirement in , she continued to revise her husband's earlier works and to write her own articles, several of which supported her controversial view of probability theory as a science based on observable phenomena rather than an extension of mathematical set theory. In , she published a revised edition of von Mises' Mathematical Theory of Probability and Statistics , in which she removed an inconsistency present in the original work.
Late in her career, Geiringer was recognized by her alma mater , the University of Vienna, with a special ceremony honoring the 50th anniversary of her graduation. The University of Berlin, her former employer, made her a professor emeritus in , and Wheaton awarded her an honorary degree in Beyond her chosen field of mathematics, Geiringer was an avid mountain climber and also enjoyed literature and classical music.