Segal S.L. Mathematicians under the Nazis

Princeton University Press, 2003. — 536 p.Contrary to popular belief - and despite the expulsion, emigration, or death of many German mathematicians - substantial mathematics was produced in Germany during 1933-1945. In this landmark social history of the mathematics community in Nazi Germany, Sanford Segal examines how the Nazi years affected the personal and academic lives of those German mathematicians who continued to work in Germany.The effects of the Nazi regime on the lives of mathematicians ranged from limitations on foreign contact to power struggles that rattled entire institutions, from changed work patterns to military draft, deportation, and death. Based on extensive archival research, Mathematicians under the Nazis shows how these mathematicians, variously motivated, reacted to the period's intense political pressures. It details the consequences of their actions on their colleagues and on the practice and organs of German mathematics, including its curricula, institutions, and journals. Throughout, Segal's focus is on the biographies of individuals, including mathematicians who resisted the injection of ideology into their profession, some who worked in concentration camps, and others (such as Ludwig Bieberbach) who used the "Aryanization" of their profession to further their own agendas. Some of the figures are no longer well known; others still tower over the field. All lived lives complicated by Nazi power.Presenting a wealth of previously unavailable information, this book is a large contribution to the history of mathematics-as well as a unique view of what it was like to live and work in Nazi Germany.Abbreviations
Why Mathematics?
The Crisis in Mathematics
The German Academic Crisis
Three Mathematical Case Studies
The Suss Book Project
The Suss Book Project
Hasse's Appointment at Göttingen
Academic Mathematical Life
Erich Bessel-Hagen and the General Atmosphere
Dozentenschaft Reports
Foreign Contact and Travel
Mathematical Camps
Students and Faculty before and during Wartime
The Value of Mathematics in the Nazi State
Secondary and Elementary Mathematics
The Wartime Drafting of Scientists
PHOTOS
Mathematical Institutions
The Case of Otto Blumenthal
The Lachmann Paper Incident
Max Steck and the "Lambert Project"
Resistance to Ideological Articles
Heinrich Scholz, Logician
Miscellaneous Non-German Authors
The Bieberbach-Bohr Exchange and the 1934 Meeting of the DMV
The MR and the Content of University Mathematics Teaching
The Post-Crisis Mathematical Society and the Role of Wilhelm Suss
The Creation of the Oberwolfach Institute
Applied Mathematics in Nazi Germany
Mathematics in the Concentration Camps
Ludwig Bieberbach and "Deutsche Mathematik"
Bieberbach and Landau
The Frankfurt Succession
Bieberbach's Conversion to Intuitionism
The Bologna Congress
The Question of Bieberbach's Motivations
Mathematics and Typological Psychology
Efforts to Ideologize Mathematics
Deutsche Mathematik
The Case of Herbert Knothe
Bieberbach's Standing with Colleagues
The Case of Richard Rado
Germans and Jews
Wilhelm Blaschke
The Development of Heinrich Behnke's Attitudes
Erich Heeke
Oswald T eichmuller
Ernst Witt
Richard Courant
Edmund Landau
Felix Hausdorff
Ernst Peschl
Paul Riebesell
Helmut Ulm and Alfred Stohr
Ernst Zermelo
Gerhard Gentzen
Hans Petersson
Erich Kähler
Wilhelm Suss
The Positions of German MathematiciansAppendix