Person: Tietz, Horst
Horst Tietz was a German mathematician who worked primarily in the field of function theory.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In 1927 Horst and his parents moved to a new apartment in the Sievekingsallee district of Hamburg.
- In fact, although six years younger than his cousin Rolf Tietz, the two boys were close as they grew up.
- Horst, like his cousin, attended the Jewish elementary school of Ehepaars Moosengel in Papenstrasse in the Eilbek district of Hamburg.
- This depression caused major problems for Willi Tietz's wood business which hit desperate times.
- After graduating from school with his Abitur at Easter 1939, Tietz was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst (the Reich Labour Service).
- However, Tietz said he was always afraid of Wilhelm Blaschke, another of his professors at Hamburg.
- We get an impression of the atmosphere at the university at the time when we read Tietz's descriptions of his student days.
- Tietz relates that all the lecturers began their lecture with a Nazi salute and "Heil Hitler" (which was compulsory) except for Hecke who gave a silent nod to the class before beginning his lectures.
- This in fact happened in 1942, when somehow Tietz's presence as a secret student at the university became known and a denunciation was threatened: Zassenhaus warned Tietz, and Hecke immediately cancelled the class, giving back the student fees.
- In fact, Tietz only discovered much later that Zassenhaus was connected with a resistance effort that helped hide endangered people.
- However, Tietz had no experience in that area at all and had never taken any interest in learning about this trade.
- In July 1943 Hamburg was bombed, the Tietz home was destroyed and all their possessions were lost.
- In a letter written to Tietz in Marburg, Erich Hecke suggested that he make contact with Kurt Reidemeister at the university.
- Willi, Amanda and Horst were brought to the district court prison in the Wilhelmstrasse and kept there in individual cells until 6 March 1944 when they were sent to the work camp at Breitenau.
- Tietz was transferred from Breitenau, first to a police cell in Leipzig, then on 2 May to Fürstenberg in Mecklenburg where the Ravensbrück concentration camp was situated, and finally to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.
- Thousands were forced to join evacuation marches but Tietz was still in the camp when it was liberated by the US Third Army on 11 April.
- We note that, in the mid 1950s, Ludwig Bieberbach came to Tietz in tears saying that he had not known before about the true conditions in the concentration camps or about the Polish death camps.
- Tietz returned to Marburg to try to restart his undergraduate studies but quickly moved to Hamburg.
- Tietz suffered serious health problems, particularly with his stomach and kidneys, which resulted from his time in the concentration camp.
- After the examination Hückel asked Tietz if he would take a position as his assistant.
- Hückel said he understood the physics but thought that Tietz would be a good assistant to help him with the mathematics.
- Tietz held this position for three years while he worked for his doctorate advised by Maximilian Krafft.
- Tietz taught at Münster until 1962 when he was appointed as professor of mathematics at the University of Hanover.
- From 1962 until his retirement in 1989, Tietz held this professorship, being Dean on several occasions.
- We now look briefly at some of the papers that Tietz published before his habilitation.
- In Fabersche Entwicklungen auf geschlossenen Riemannschen Flächen Ⓣ(Faber's developments on closed Riemann surfaces) (1952) Tietz describes a system of functions that play a similar role on a closed Riemann surface to that played by the Faber polynomials in plane regions.
- In Beweis der Konvergenz eines Verfahrens von W Bartky zur Berechnung von bestimmten Integralen Ⓣ(Evidence of the convergence of a method of W Bartky to calculate definite integrals) (1952), Tietz discusses Walter Bartky's method for the evaluation of certain definite integrals.
- Tietz introduces a new aspect of the theory of conformal mapping in Zur Realisierung Riemannscher Flächen (1955).
- We should also mention the textbooks that Tietz published.
- Lineare Geometrie Ⓣ(Linear Geometry) (first edition 1967, second edition 1973) was a text based on lecture courses that Tietz had given on analytic geometry.
Born 11 March 1921, Hamburg, Germany. Died 28 January 2012, Hanover, German.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Germany
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- @J-J-O'Connor
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
