Background
Ringel, Gerhard was born on October 28, 1919 in Kollnbrunn, Austria. Arrived in United States, 1970. Son of Josef and Elisabeth (Regner) Ringel.
(In 1890 P. J. Heawood 35 published a formula which he cal...)
In 1890 P. J. Heawood 35 published a formula which he called the Map Colour Theorem. But he forgot to prove it. Therefore the world of mathematicians called it the Heawood Conjecture. In 1968 the formula was proven and therefore again called the Map Color Theorem. (This book is written in California, thus in American English. ) Beautiful combinatorial methods were developed in order to prove the formula. The proof is divided into twelve cases. In 1966 there were three of them still unsolved. In the academic year 1967/68 J. W. T. Youngs on those three cases at Santa Cruz. Sur invited me to work with him prisingly our joint effort led to the solution of all three cases. It was a year of hard work but great pleasure. Working together was extremely profitable and enjoyable. In spite of the fact that we saw each other every day, Ted wrote a letter to me, which I present here in shortened form: Santa Cruz, March 1, 1968 Dear Gerhard: Last night while I was checking our results on Cases 2, 8 and 11, and thinking of the great pleasure we had in the afternoon with the extra ordinarily elegant new solution for Case 11, it seemed to me appropriate to pause for a few minutes and dictate a historical memorandum. We began working on Case 8 on 10 October 1967, and it was settled on Tuesday night, 14 November 1967.
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mathematician university professor
Ringel, Gerhard was born on October 28, 1919 in Kollnbrunn, Austria. Arrived in United States, 1970. Son of Josef and Elisabeth (Regner) Ringel.
Although born in Kollnbrunn, Ringel was raised in Czechoslovakia and attended Charles University before being drafted into the German Army in 1940 (after Germany had taken control of much of what had been Czechoslovakia.
He was one of the pioneers in graph theory and contributed significantly to the proof of the Heawood conjecture (now the Ringel-Youngs theorem), a mathematical problem closely linked with the Four Color Theorem. After the war Ringel served for over four years in a Soviet prisoner of war camp. Gerhard Ringel started his academic career as professor at the Free University Berlin.
In 1970 he left Germany due to bureaucratic consequences of the German student movement, and continued his career at the University of California, Santa Cruz, having been invited there by his coauthor, Professor John West. T. (Ted) Youngs.
He was awarded honorary doctors degrees from the University of Karlsruhe (TH) and the Free University Berlin. Besides his mathematical skills he was a widely acknowledged entomologist.
His main emphasis lay on collecting and breeding butterflies. Prior to his death, he gave his outstanding collection of butterflies to the UCSC Museum of Natural History Collections.
(In 1890 P. J. Heawood 35 published a formula which he cal...)
Married Isolde Ringel Ringel, December 19, 1944 (divorced 1966). Children: Gerhard, Ingrid, Renate. Married Isolde Putzky Ringel, August 16, 1966.