Background
Samelson, Hans was born on March 3, 1916 in Strassburg, Germany. Came to the United States, 1941. Son of Siegfried and Irmgard Adelheid (Engel) Samelson.
mathematician university professor
Samelson, Hans was born on March 3, 1916 in Strassburg, Germany. Came to the United States, 1941. Son of Siegfried and Irmgard Adelheid (Engel) Samelson.
His family helped him leave Nazi Germany in 1936 for Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied with the geometer Heinz Hopf and received his doctorate in 1940 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
He spent most of his youth in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), and began his advanced mathematical education there, at the University of Breslau. In 1941, he accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and immigrated to the United States. He arrived by ship six months before the United States entered World World War II and acquired United States. citizenship several years later.
After leaving Princeton, he held faculty positions at the University of Wyoming (1942–1943), Syracuse University (1943–1946) and the University of Michigan (1946–1960) before coming to Stanford in 1960.
He served as chair of the Mathematics Department from 1979 to 1982. Though he became emeritus in 1986, he remained professionally active throughout his retirement, publishing articles on both contemporary and historical mathematical topics.
One solved an architectural puzzle associated with the construction of the Brunelleschi Dome in Florence, Italy.
Member American Mathematics society, Mathematics Association American, Swiss Mathematics Society.
Married Renate Reiner, November 29, 1940 (divorced 1956). 1 child, Peter R.; married Nancy Carter Morse, December 21, 1956. Children: Amy C., Roger M.