3 May 2010; Mat-Nat Faculty (UiTø), seminar room 216, Breivang. Friday 10:15-12:00.

 Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze (University of Agder, Kristiansand)

"Refugee mathematicians from Nazi-Germany: recent findings with some emphasis on emigration to Scandinavia"

The emigration of mathematicians from Europe after 1933 and the ensuing shift of the world center of mathematics from Europe to the United States is arguably the most important historical result of Nazi rule for mathematics. My recent book with Princeton University Press (2009) gives an account of emigration in mathematics within Europe (mainly to the U.K.) and from Europe during the Nazi period. The discussion is restricted to German-speaking emigration, which, however, was by far the most important part, only to some degree matched by Polish, and, to an even lesser extent, French and Italian emigration.

The talk puts emphasis on emigration to Scandinavia. For some young emigrants such as Willy Feller, who was influenced by Harald Cramér in Stockholm, and Werner Romberg, who changed from physics to applied mathematics in Norwegian exile, the years in Scandinavian exile were crucial for their later careers. Others, in particular older ones such as Hermann Müntz, were not equally successful. Emigrants to Norway, such as Ernst Jacobsthal and Paul Kuhn (Trondheim), and to Denmark, such as Werner and Käte Fenchel (Copenhagen) and Otto Neugebauer, had to proceed to other countries, notably Sweden, after German occupation. For others such as Max Dehn and Carl Ludwig Siegel(Oslo) and Herbert Busemann (Copenhagen), Scandinavia was a temporary refuge before going on to the United States. The role of Danish (Harald Bohr), Norwegian (Viggo Brun) and Swedish (Gunnar Dahlberg, H. Cramér) hosts will be briefly considered too.