Mathwar/Personlist/Hopf Eberhard
Eberhard Hopf
(* April 4th 1902 Salzburg Austria, † July 24th 1983 Bloomington, Indiana)
Eberhard Hopf, an Austrian mathematician who made significant contributions in topology and ergodic theory, was born in Salzburg. Most of his scientific formation, however, was in Germany, where he received a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1926 and, in 1929, his Habilitation in Mathematical Astronomy from the University of Berlin. The Hopf maximum principle is an early result of his (1927) which is one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations.
Life
Eberhard Hopf was born in Salzburg, Austria, but his scientific career was divided between Germany and the United States. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1926 and his Habilitation in Mathematical Astronomy from the University of Berlin in 1929.
In 1936 Hopf received and accepted an offer of a full professorship from the University of Leipzig. Hopf, with his wife Ilse and their infant daughter Barbara, returned to Germany, which by this time was under the control of the Nazi Party.
In 1942 Hopf was drafted to work in the German Aeronautical Institute. In 1944, one year before the end of World War II, Hopf was appointed to a professorship at the University of Munich. In 1947, at the behest of Richard Courant he returned to the United States, where he presented the definitive solution of Hurewicz's problem.
Hopf was never forgiven by many people for his moving to Germany in 1936, where the Nazi party was in power. As a result, most of his work in ergodic theory and topology was neglected or even attributed to others in the years following the end of World War II. An example of this was the expulsion of Hopf's name from the discrete version of the Wiener–Hopf equations, which were frequently referred to as "Wiener filter".