Helga Königsdorf

Helga Königsdorf (13 July 1938 – 4 May 2014) was an East German statistician and novelist. She is notable for becoming distinguished in two distinct careers - science and literature.

She wrote three books on mathematics, two co-written with her husband Olaf Bunke, who outlived her by seven years, and thirteen literary books of her own. My Indecent Dreams, her first collection of short stories, was published at the age of 40. Fission is her best-known novel. Königsdorf died of Parkinson's disease in 2014 at the age of 75.

Early life Helga Königsdorf was born a farmer's daughter in Gera, Saxony. After studying physics,

Career Known as Professor Helga Bunke, she was appointed as Director of the East Berlin Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1961 to 1990. Königsdorf lived with Parkinson's disease for more than 30 years.

Math Helga Bunke: Gewöhnliche Differentialgleichungen mit zufälligen Parametern. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1972. Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Statistical methods of model building. Berlin 1986. Olaf Bunke, Helga Bunke (Hrsg.): Nonlinear regression, functional relations and robust methods. 2 Bände, New York 1989.

English translations Few of her fiction works have been translated into English. Fission (Hydra in the original) was published in 2000 by Northwestern University Press, translated by Susan H. Gillespie, director of the Institute for International Liberal education at Bard College.

Three Political Essays and Two Further Essays translated by Brian Keenan in 2013 for the University of Texas at Austin.