Alfred Pringsheim was a prominent German mathematician. He is best known for his discovery concerning power series with positive coefficients, as well as for his elaboration of the theory of integral transcendental functions, and for his extremely simple proof of Cauchy’s integral theorem.
Background
Ethnicity:
Pringsheim came from an extremely wealthy Silesian merchant family with Jewish roots.
Alfred Pringsheim was born on September 2, 1850, in Ohlau, Silesia, Germany. He was the first-born child and only son of the Upper Silesian railway entrepreneur and coal mine owner Rudolf Pringsheim (1821–1901) and his wife Paula, née Deutschmann (1827–1909). He had a younger sister, Martha.
Education
Pringsheim attended the Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau, where he excelled in music and mathematics. Starting in 1868 he studied mathematics and physics in Berlin and at the Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg. In 1872 he was awarded a doctorate in mathematics, studying under Leo Königsberger.
In 1886 Pringsheim was appointed an extraordinary professor at Munich but did not become a full professor until 1901. He retired in 1922.
After 1933 he was subjected to persecution as a “non-Aryan”; Pringsheim was forced to sell his house to the Nazi party, which tore it down to erect a party building. Having been forced to give up his library and to move several times, he was finally allowed to sell his celebrated majolica collection to a London dealer, although he had to surrender the greater part of the proceeds. In 1939 he moved to Zurich, where he died two years later.
Pringsheim considered himself to be a German citizen who no longer followed the "Mosaic belief" (meaning conservative or orthodox Judaism). He repeatedly declined to have himself baptized.
Views
In mathematics, Pringsheim was the most consequent follower of Weierstrass. His field was pre-Lebesgue real functions and complex functions; his work is characterized by meticulous rigor rather than by great ideas.
Membership
Pringsheim was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1898. He was also a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He was awarded membership in the Leopoldina, Germany’s oldest academy of natural sciences.
Personality
Pringsheim was a lover and promoter of music and fine arts. In his youth he had been a friend of Richard Wagner; and with his wife, Hedwig Dohm, he made his home into a center of Munich's social and cultural life. The novelist Thomas Mann, who was his son-in-law, wrote a novel based on the Pringsheim family.
Pringsheim had a deep, early interest in music and was especially fascinated by the works of Richard Wagner. He corresponded with Wagner personally, whose letters he took with him when he went into exile to Switzerland. His musical inclinations led to the publication of several arrangements of Wagner’s work, and he also wrote on subjects in the field of music. His association with Wagner was so intense that Pringsheim supported Wagner financially to a significant extent, and also backed the Bayreuth music festival. In gratitude, he received a certificate designating him as a patron, which guaranteed him a seat at certain performances.
Later he became interested in the theory and history of art, building up important collections of majolica earthenware and paintings.
Also, Pringsheim was a brilliant lecturer and conversationalist, but his writings do not reflect this brilliance. This is even true of his celebrated Festrede, a paragon of stylistic and oratorical splendor only for those who had heard him speak. The voluminous edition of his courses is one of the dreariest specimens of epsilontics.
Pringsheim's refined wit was famous. His sprightly Bierrede was the acme of the yearly meeting of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung and was mentioned by mathematicians throughout the year. His puns were famous: Once when he was asked about his son, who at that time worked as a physicist under Nernst, he answered “Peter ist in Berlin und lernt da den Nernst der Lebens kennen.”
Interests
music, art, history of art
Music & Bands
Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Connections
In 1878 Pringsheim married the Berlin actress Gertrude Hedwig Anna Dohm (1855–1942), whose mother was the famous Berlin advocate of women’s rights Hedwig Dohm (1831–1919). They had five children: Erik (born 1879), Peter (born 1881), Heinz (born 1882) and twins born in 1883, Klaus and Katharina, known as Katia. His first-born son, Erik, was exiled to Argentina because of his dissolute life and gambling debts and died there at an early age. His sons Peter and Klaus followed him in pursuing academic careers, obtaining professorships in physics and musical composition. One musician in the family was enough, so his third son, Heinz, became an archaeologist with a doctorate in that field, but soon changed course, becoming a successful conductor and critic in Berlin and Munich. His daughter Katia was the first female in Munich to earn the qualifications for university admission and was one of the first active women students at Munich University. She later became the wife of the author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.