Herta Freitag

Herta Freitag ( Taussig; December 6, 1908 – January 25, 2000) was an Austrian-American mathematician, a professor of mathematics at Hollins College, known for her work on the Fibonacci numbers.

Life She was born as Herta Taussig in Vienna, earning a master's degree from the University of Vienna in 1934. She took a teaching position at the university. However, her father (the editor of Die Neue Freie Presse) had publicly opposed the Nazis. Herta and her parents decided to move to a summer cottage in the mountains outside Vienna, to give themselves some time to make plans for the future. Herta's brother, Walter Taussig, a musician, was touring the United States and decided to remain in the U.S. (Walter later became an assistant conductor for the Metropolitan Opera Company.) Herta and her parents immediately started to work on finding a sponsor to bring them to the United States. However, even when they identified a possible sponsor, they had to wait until their quota number was called up.

Recognition Freitag was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1959.

After her retirement, she became a frequent contributor to the Fibonacci Quarterly, and the journal honored her in 1996 by dedicating an issue to her on the occasion of her 89th birthday (89 being a Fibonacci number).