Gerhard Kowalewski

Gerhard Kowalewski (27 March 1876 – 21 February 1950) was a German mathematician who introduced the matrices notation.

Early life Waldemar Hermann Gerhard Kowalewski was born on March 27, 1876, in Alt Järshagen in Pomerania, then part of the German Empire. He was the son of Julius Leonard Kowalewski, a school teacher. In 1893 he left home to attend the University of Königsberg where his brother Christian Kowalewski was a professor of philosophy and mathematics. There he studied mathematics and philosophy before enrolling at the University of Greifswald, before eventually settling at the University of Leipzig, where he earned his doctorate with the thesis Über eine Kategorie von Transformationsgruppen einer vierdimensionalen Mannigfaltigkeit in 1898.

Academia In 1901 he became an associate professor at the University of Greifswald before moving on to the University of Bonn in 1904. He returned to the German University of Prague in 1939 where he held a position until 1945, which following the expulsion of Germans following the war, fled to Munich where he established himself at the Technical University of Munich.

Kowalewski died in 1950 in Gräfelfing.

Nazi party membership Kowalewski was a member of the Nazi party, who said about Adolf Hitler that "he has been sent to us by Providence." This helped him secure his position as Rector at the Technical University of Dresden.