Mathwar/Personlist/Helly Eduard
Eduard Helly
(* June 1st 1884 in Vienna, Austria, † November 28th 1943 in Chicago, USA)
Life
On the outbreak of World War I, Helly enlisted in the army. While serving as a lieutenant in September 1915 he was shot. The bullet went through his lung and did damage to his health from which he never recovered throughout the rest of his life. After being shot he was captured by the Russians. After this he spent years in hospitals and prisoner of war camps in Siberia. One might have expected that the end of World War 1 in 1918 would have led to Helly's release but by this time the Russian armies were fighting each other and escape was impossible. Even after leaving Russia it was a long route back to Vienna for Helly who travelled through Japan, the Far East, Egypt and the Middle East before reaching home in 1920.
Helly was forced to earn a living working in a bank, then as an actuary when the bank collapsed in 1929. He then found a job with an insurance company but even this difficult life became worse in 1938. Hitler himself had entered Austria on 12 March 1938 with the German army, and a Nazi government had been set up there. Helly was dismissed from his post because he was a Jew. He fled from Austria to save himself and his family, emigrating to the United States in 1938.
Life remained difficult for Helly and his family in the United States. At first he resorted to giving private tuition as he had done in Vienna many years before. His first break occurred in 1939 when Einstein supported him for a position in Paterson Junior College in New Jersey. With support from so eminent a person as Einstein, he was successful and received the position. Two years later, in 1941, he moved to Monmouth Junior College, also in New Jersey. The following year saw both Helly and his wife employed as mathematicians by the Signal Corps in Chicago. Helly again took up familiar work since he was preparing mathematics training manuals, while his wife taught mathematics.