![]() ![]() Hilbert had received his doctorate at Königsberg university in the beginning of that year under the supervision of Ferdinand (since 1918: von) Lindemann (1852–1939) and spent the winter term 1885/86 with the latter’s doctoral father Klein at Leipzig. Felix Klein (1849–1925) was the doctoral father of neither of them, formally seen, but had decisive influence on the academic careers of both of them.Įngel and Hilbert learned to know each other at Leipzig university in autumn 1885. ![]() Also their academic studies had a similar structure: Both started them at the university next to their birthplace, Engel at Leipzig, Hilbert at Königsberg, and spent one semester abroad before finishing their dissertation, Engel at Berlin, Hilbert at Heidelberg. But it sees appropriate to me to commemorate Heinrich Wefelscheid in this way, who was not only an active mathematician himself, but also an effective supporter of present mathematicians in need and a keeper of the memory of past mathematicians.įriedrich Engel and David Hilbert were almost exactly of the same age: Engel was born on December 26, 1861, Hilbert less than one month later, on January 23, 1862. Several circumstances during the last years have hindered me from writing up this manuscript until this very sad occasion. He suggested that I should submit a written version of my talk to Results in Mathematics. ![]() After it, Heinrich Wefelscheid expressed his interest not only in its part on the foundations of geometry, but also in the part concerned with how to get a professorship in mathematics. (This was the one with the “Festkolloquium” at the occasion of Helmut Karzel’s (*1928) eightieth birthday.) The talk took place in the conference room of Dresdner Bank at Pariser Platz in Berlin on March 3, 2008. 3.Īt the end of our conversation Heinrich Wefelscheid invited me to give a talk on the correspondence between Engel and Hilbert at the 35th “Arbeitstagung über Geometrie und Algebra” in the beginning of the next year. It is given in context in the beginning of Sect. The quote refers to Hilbert’s learning of non-Euclidean geometry from Pasch’s “Vorlesungen über neuere Geometrie” and to the importance of this book for the axiomatization of geometry. I mentioned that I had found the German original of the quote in the title of the present article in a letter of Janufrom Hilbert to Friedrich Engel (1861–1941) and had informed Dov Tamari (1911–2006) about it who utilized it several times in his book on Moritz Pasch (1843–1930). Our common interests in the history of mathematics led to a discussion on David Hilbert’s (1862–1943) “Grundlagen der Geometrie”. We once met again at the celebration of Günter Pickert’s (1917–2015) ninetieth birthday at Gießen university in 2007. ![]() Even if our mathematical interests in the strict sense were not too close to each other, we stayed in contact, for example, in 1997 he formally introduced me to Mathematische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. In the 1980ies I learned to know Heinrich Wefelscheid when he visited Münster university for one of the great Saturday colloquiums on theoretical mathematics that were organized there each summer. ![]()
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