Mathwar/Personlist/von Mises Richard: Difference between revisions
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Latest revision as of 11:13, 15 July 2009
Richard von Mises
(* April 19th 1883 in Lemberg, Austria, † July 14th 1953 in Boston, USA)
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destinationRichard von Mises
Life
He was professor of applied mathematics at Strasburg from 1909 until 1918, although this was a period which was interrupted by World War I. Even before the outbreak of the war von Mises had qualified as a pilot and he gave the first university course on powered flight in 1913. When war broke out von Mises joined the Austro-Hungarian army and piloted aircraft. He had lectured on the design of aircraft before the war and he now put this into practice leading a team which constructed a 600-horsepower plane for the Austrian army in 1915.
After the end of the war von Mises was appointed to a new chair of hydrodynamics and aerodynamics at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. Appointed in 1919 he soon moved again, this time to the University of Berlin to become the director of the new Institute of Applied Mathematics which had been set up there.
Hitler came to power and on 7 April 1933 the Civil Service Law provided the means of removing Jewish teachers from the universities, and of course also to remove those of Jewish descent from other roles. All civil servants who were not of Aryan descent (having one grandparent of the Jewish religion made someone non-Aryan) were to be retired. Von Mises in one sense was not Jewish for he was a Roman Catholic by religion. He still fell under the non-Aryan definition of the act but there was an exemption clause which exempted non-Aryans who had fought in World War I. Von Mises certainly qualified under this clause and it would have allowed him to keep his chair in Berlin in 1933. He realised, quite correctly, that the exemption clause would not save him for long.
Von Mises saw an offer of a chair in Turkey as a way out of his predicament in Germany but he tried to ensure that his pension rights were preserved. On 12 October 1933 he wrote to the ministry explaining that it would benefit Germany if he accepted a post in Turkey and that he should be allowed to retain his pension rights for his 24 years of service. He received the reply that he would have to relinquish all rights of a salary, a pension or support for his dependants. He protested in a further letter to the Ministry that he was legally entitled to rights that he was not prepared to relinquish. The Nazi Theodor Vahlen wanted to take over as director of the Institute despite poor academic qualities. He promised von Mises that if he would support him to succeed as Director of the Institute then he would ensure that von Mises would not lose his pension rights.