Background
Klingenberg, Wilhelm P.A. was born on January 28, 1924 in Rostock, Germany. Son of Paul F. and Henny J. (Duncker) Klingenberg.
mathematician university professor
Klingenberg, Wilhelm P.A. was born on January 28, 1924 in Rostock, Germany. Son of Paul F. and Henny J. (Duncker) Klingenberg.
After the war, he studied mathematics in Kiel, where he finished his Doctor of Philosophy in 1950 with Karl-Heinrich Weise in affine differential geometry.
In 1934 the family moved to Berlin and was to join the German army in 1941. After some time as an assistant of Friedrich Bachmann, work in the group of Wilhelm Blaschke in Hamburg (including his Habilitation in 1954), and a stay in Rome (in the group of Francesco Severi and Beniamino Segre) he obtained a position in Göttingen (with Kurt Reidemeister), where he stayed until 1963. 1954/55 he spent a year in Bloomington/Indiana.
During this time he also visited Marston Morse in Princeton.
In the years 1956/57 and 1957/58 he followed invitations to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1962 he visited the University of California, Berkeley as a guest of Shiing-Shen Chern, whom he knew from his time in Hamburg.
Later he was a full (C4-)professor at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and in 1966 a full (C4-)professor at the Universität Bonn, a position he kept till his retirement in 1989. 1966 he was an Invited Speaker at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow ("Morse theory in the space of closed curves").
Lieutenant German Army, 1943-1945. Member Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, German Mathematics Vereinigung, American Mathematics Society.
Married Christine H. Kob, December 28, 1953. Children: Christian, Wilhelm, Karin.