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Person: Rothe, Erich Hans

Erich Hans Rothe was a German mathematician who worked in the field of analysis.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• Rothe survived the battle but he was wounded and eventually discharged from the German Army in December 1918.
• He did not return to the University of Munich but instead, in 1919, enrolled at the Technischen Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg where he studied for one semester attending lectures by Rudolf Ernst Rothe (1873-1942).
• Rothe took the examinations to become a Gymnasium teacher in 1923 and, from then until 1926, he was a student teacher at the Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
• In a paper with the same title, submitted on 12 July 1926, Rothe thanked Erhard Schmidt for showing him how some of his original proofs could be simplified.
• Rothe was awarded his doctorate on 27 May 1927.
• In his thesis Rothe lists all his lecturers at university.
• Those who taught him mathematics in Berlin include Ludwig Bieberbach, Constantin Carathéodory, Hans Hamburger, Konrad Knopp, Karl Löwner, Richard von Mises, Hans Rademacher, Erhard Schmidt, Issai Schur, and St Jolles (1857-1942); those who taught him physics include Eugen Blasius, Albert Einstein, Max von Laue (1879-1960), and Max Planck; and those who taught him philosophy include Max Dessoir (1867-1947), Alois Riehl (1844-1924), and Eduard Spranger (1882-1963).
• In addition to his teachers at Berlin and Munich who we have mentioned above, Rothe also lists as his teachers Brentano, Fischer, Fuchs, Grummach, Haarmann, Hammerstein, Henning, Heyn, Hofer, Kükenthal, Külpe, Lagally, H Maier, E Meyer, Reichel, Rieffert, Voss, and Wertheimer.
• The publication of the paper based on his thesis was not Rothe's first publication.
• In 1925, in collaboration with Hans Rademacher, he published Die Differential- und Integralgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik Ⓣ(The differential and integral equations of mechanics and physics) as Chapter 19 of the first volume of Philipp Frank and Richard von Mises' Die Differential- und Integralgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik Ⓣ(The differential and integral equations of mechanics and physics).
• Also in this volume are papers by Constantin Carathéodory, Richard von Mises, Gábor Szegő, Karl Löwner, Ludwig Bieberbach, Hans Rademacher, and Richard Courant.
• Now at Berlin, Rothe had met his fellow student of mathematics, physics and philosophy, Hildegard Ille.
• After a year at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, headed by Albert Einstein, she was a student teacher at the Chamisso-School in Berlin-Schöneberg before marrying Rothe in 1928.
• Rothe had worked at the Institute of Applied Mathematics at the University of Berlin in 1926-27 before being appointed to the Engineering School in Breslau in 1927 and habilitating there in 1928.
• During his time in these positions in Breslau, Rothe took study leave for a year which he spent at the University of Göttingen.
• After publishing the paper based on his thesis, Rothe published: Ein Beitrag zum Cauchysehen Problem Ⓣ(A Contribution to the Cauchy problem) (1928); Über die Approximation stetiger Funktionen durch Eigenfunktionen elliptischer Differentialgleichungen Ⓣ(On the approximation of continuous functions by the eigenfunctions of elliptic differential equations) (1929); Zweidimensionale parabolische Randwertaufgaben als Grenzfall eindimensionaler Randwertaufgaben Ⓣ(Two-dimensional parabolic boundary value problems as a limiting case of one-dimensional boundary value problems) (1930); Über die Wärmeleitungsgleichung mit nicht-konstante Koeffizienten im räumlichen Falle Ⓣ(On the heat equation with non-constant coefficients in the spatial case) (1931); Über die Grundlösung bei parabolischen Gleichungen Ⓣ(Regarding the basic solution at parabolic equations) (1931); Über lineare elliptische Differentialgleichungen zweiter Ordung, deren zugeordnete Massestimmung von Konstanter Krummung ist Ⓣ(On nonlinear elliptic differential equations second order, whose associated mass mood of Constant Curvature) (1931); and Über eine Verallgemeinerung der Besselschen Funktionen Ⓣ(On a generalization of Bessel functions) (1932).
• On 15 April 1931, Erich and Hildegard Rothe had a son, Erhard William Rothe, who was born in Breslau.
• We have found around 800 reviews by Rothe and around 170 by his wife.
• Gábor Szegő was the professor at Königsberg and, like Rothe, was Jewish and had served in World War I.
• While still in Königsberg, Szegő wrote to Richard Brauer who was in Princeton asking him if he could help Rothe emigrate to the United States.
• Brauer talked to Oswald Veblen who suggested that Rothe might be better trying to emigrate to the Soviet Union.
• Because of his Jewish background, Rothe was dismissed from his positions in 1935.
• My first encounter with Rothe was at the Zurcher Kolloquium, where he lectured on his new research on mapping degree and its applications.
• In 1944 Rothe came to Ann Arbor to begin a long period of brilliant service to the University of Michigan as teacher and scholar.
• In 1964, having reached the age of 69, Rothe retired from his professorship at the University of Michigan.
• Retirement certainly did not mean that Rothe stopped undertaking research into mathematics.
• Rothe continued to publish research papers; we have seen at least 14 papers published after his retirement.

Born 21 July 1895, Berlin, Germany. Died 19 February 1988, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan, USA.

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References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

1. O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive