Mathwar/Personlist/Neugebauer Otto
Otto Neugebauer
(* May 26th 1899 in Innsbruck, Austria, † February 19th 1990 in Princeton, USA)
Life
Neugebauer was an expert in languages and he had studied Egyptian. It was natural, therefore, for Bohr to ask his friend to review a publication on the Rhind papyrus. Once he had begun to study the work, Neugebauer realised that the subject which he wanted to work in was the history of mathematics. He approached Courant and Hilbert to see if he could work for his doctorate on the history of Egyptian unit fractions. They agreed to supervise such a project and Neugebauer received his doctorate for a dissertation on this topic in 1926.
Fortunately Neugebauer had a good friend in Harald Bohr, and he invited Neugebauer to move to the University of Copenhagen in January 1934. Neugebauer took the editorial office of Zentralblatt für Matematik to Copenhagen with him and from 1934 until 1938 Zentralblatt continued to flourish from its headquarters there. The struggle to produce the reviewing journal became more difficult throughout this period, however, for the Nazis tried more and more to influence the editorial policy of the journal. Sadly some fine mathematicians were seduced by the Nazi ideas and mathematicians such as Blaschke attacked the journal.
Matters came to a head in 1938 when Springer-Verlag insisted that Zentralblatt für Matematik be produced in accordance with Nazi principles. Levi-Civita, who was on the editorial board, was dismissed and Neugebauer, together with almost the whole of the editorial board, resigned. Neugebauer destroyed all the records of the journal except for the cumulative index.