Mathwar/Personlist/Gentzen Gerhard
Gerhard Gentzen
(* November 24th 1909 in Greifswald, † August 4th in Prague)
German mathematician and logician.
Life
Gentzen was a student of Paul Bernays at the University of Göttingen. Bernays was fired as "non-Aryan" in April 1933 and therefore Hermann Weyl formally acted as his supervisor. Gentzen kept, however, at great risk to his career, up his contacts with Bernays until the beginning of the second world war. In November 1933, he joined the SA to pass the state exam for teachers.
Between November 1935 and 1939 he was assistant of David Hilbert in Göttingen. To be able to take part in a congress in Paris in 1937, he had to join the NSDAP.
Since 1943 he was a teacher at the University of Prague. After war he starved to death in Prague, after being arrested like all other Germans in Prague on May 7, 1945 and deprived of food.
A friend described his last moments:
"I can see him lying on his wooden bunk thinking all day about the mathematical problems that preoccupied him. He once confided in me that he was really quite content since now he had at last time to think about a consistency proof for analysis... He also concerned himself with other questions such as that of an artificial language, etc. Now and then he would give a short talk ... we were continually reassured that the formalities of our release would only take a few days longer.... he was hoping to be able to return to Göttingen and devote himself fully to the study of mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. He was dreaming of an Institute for this purpose ..."