Mathwar/Personlist/Schwerdtfeger Hans
Hans Schwerdtfeger
(* December 9th 1902 in Göttingen, † June 26th 1990 in Adelaide, Australia)
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Life
Hans Schwerdtfeger's father was a Prussian Major. Hans was brought up in Göttingen where he attended school. Tragedy struck the family in 1914 when World War I broke out and Hans' father was one of the first casualties of the war. Following the end of the war in 1918 the German monarchy collapsed and was replaced by a parliamentary democracy. The financial condition of the country deteriorated due to the vast expense of the war together with the excessive sums the victorious countries demanded from Germany. To avoid bankruptcy large amounts of money were printed and hyperinflation set in. The Schwerdtfeger family, already in a poor financial state after the death of Hans' father, suffered even more severe hardships that many Germans.
Hans attended secondary school in Göttingen but before completing his studies he left to work at Siemens-Schuckert in Berlin. This firm, set up in 1903 through the absorbing of the Nürnberg firm Schuckert & Co. by the Construction Firm of Siemens & Halske, took over Siemens power-engineering activities. Schwerdtfeger returned to Göttingen to complete his school education, then entered Göttingen University to study mathematics.
Opposition to the Nazis was of course extremely dangerous and ultimately would have meant that Schwerdtfeger would have been killed. However, realising the dangers of his position he fled from Germany in 1936 with his family. They settled first in Prague but in 1939, with World War II imminent, they left for Zurich, moved on to Grenoble and finally Toulon before escaping from war torn Europe and emigrating to Sydney in Australia. In 1940 he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, moving to the position of Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. In 1957 he was appointed as an Associate Professor of Mathematics at McGill University in Montreal in Canada, and he was promoted to full Professor in 1960.