Redaktion: K. Sigmund, G. Greschonig (Univ. Wien, Strudlhofgasse ...

Minisymposium Mathematik und Emigration
Persönliche Erinnerungen an 1938
FRANZ ALT
New York
Mathematik und Verantwortung
JOCHEN BRÜNING
Berlin
Kurt Gödel, Max Dehn and the trans-Siberian escape route
JOHN W. DAWSON
Jr., Penn State York, U.S.A.
Between them, Kurt Gödel and Max Dehn settled the first three of the problems
on Hilbert’s 1900 list. Both also escaped from the Nazis via the trans-Siberian
railway – the only mathematicians of stature to do so, so it seems – and lived
thereafter in the United States. I will compare and contrast the careers of the
two men, their accomplishments before and after their emigration, and the circumstances
of their escapes: Why and how they left when they did, how they
overcame the obstacles to their emigration, and how they were received by academic
institutions in the U.S. The talk will be illustrated with reproductions of
documents from European and American archives, and will include excerpts from
an unpublished speech by Dehn in which he recounted details of his journey across
the U.S.S.R.
Richard von Mises: The universalism of an uprooted Austrian
individualist
REINHARD SIEGMUND-SCHULTZE
Kristiansand, Norwegen
reinhard.siegmund-schultze@hia.no
Examining the biography of the Austrian-German-Jewish-American engineer,
applied mathematician, positivist philosopher and Rilke-specialist, Richard von
Mises (1883-1953), promises a deepened understanding of fundamental processes
of interaction of science and society in the first part of the 20th century. The talk
will try to shed some light on the controversial and multi-layered personality of
51