Ludwig Berwald

Ludwig Berwald (8 December 1883 – 20 April 1942) was a German mathematician best known for his contributions to differential geometry, especially Finsler geometry. He taught at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the German University in Prague for 32 years, publishing 54 papers, before being deported by the Nazi SS to the Łódź Jewish Ghetto, where he and his wife Hedwig died within a year. In 1900, the family moved to Munich, where Ludwig matriculated at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1902. There he studied mathematics under Aurel Voss, alongside notable mathematicians Hugo Dingler and Fritz Noether, and received his PhD in 1908 for his thesis entitled Über die Krümmungseigenschaften der Brennflächen eines geradlinigen Strahlsystems und der in ihm enthaltenen Regelflächen (On the properties of curvature on the internal surfaces of rectilinear systems, and surfaces contained therein). Due to sanatorium treatment for pulmonary illness, he was unable to continue his work in Munich. Through friends, he eventually became a lecturer at the German University in Prague, achieving full professorship in 1924. There, he developed friendships and successful collaborations with fellow mathematicians Georg Pick, Paul Funk, and Élie Cartan, publishing some 54 articles and the Berwald–Moór metric function. For extending the concept of Riemann curvature to Finsler spaces, Berwald has been credited as the founder of differential geometry of Finsler spaces. On 22 October 1941, the day after submitting his last article,

Selected works