Frank Terpe

Frank Terpe (10 October 1929 – 8 April 2013) was a German mathematician and SDP/SPD politician.

Terpe was a professor at Greifswald University. In 1990 he served as Minister for Research and Technology in East Germany's only democratically elected government.

Life Early years Frank Terpe was born a couple of weeks before the US stock market famously collapsed, in a small country town some 25 km (15 miles) down river of Meißen in central Germany. His father was a crane operator. and achieved further academic promotion (Habilitation) in 1967 for work on the Theory of Maximalen Integrals. In 1969 he was appointed Professor for Analysis. Between 1971 and 1980 Frank Terpe was in charge of the Mathematics Department at the EMAU. till his retirement in 1993.

Political career In November 1989, a few weeks after his sixtieth birthday, Terpe joined the newly (re)formed SDP (party) (which in parallel with German reunification would merge with its western equivalent, the SPD (party), in September 1990). In February 1990 he was voted on to the party executive. In East Germany's only free election, which took place on 18 March 1990, Terpe was elected to membership of the country's National Assembly (Volkskammer), where he became the deputy Chairman of the SDP group. On 12 April 1990 he was appointed to the government being formed by Lothar de Maizière as Minister for Research and Technology in succession to Peter-Klaus Budig.