Werner Romberg (born 16 May 1909 in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

; died 5 February 2003 in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

) was a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

. Romberg studied mathematics and physics form 1928 in

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

and completed his doctorate in 1933 at

Munich University The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

under the supervision of

Arnold Sommerfeld Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (; 5 December 1868 – 26 April 1951) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in Atomic physics, atomic and Quantum mechanics, quantum physics, and also educated and ...

; his thesis was entitled "Zur Polarisation des Kanalstrahllichtes" On the polarisation of channel light beams" In Munich he studied mathematics under, among others,

Oskar Perron Oskar Perron (7 May 1880 – 22 February 1975) was a German mathematician. He was a professor at the University of Heidelberg from 1914 to 1922 and at the University of Munich from 1922 to 1951. He made numerous contributions to differentia ...

and

Constantin Carathéodory Constantin Carathéodory (; 13 September 1873 – 2 February 1950) was a Greeks, Greek mathematician who spent most of his professional career in Germany. He made significant contributions to real and complex analysis, the calculus of variations, ...

. In 1933, as a so-called "

half-Jew The term half-Jew () is a derogatory term for people with a non-Jewish and a Jewish parent. The overwhelming majority of the so-called half-Jews were legally classified as " first-degree Jewish hybrids" during the era of Nazi Germany. Occasionally ...

" in the terminology of the new

National Socialist Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequen ...

government of Germany, he sought to emigrate to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. From 1934 to 1937 he worked as a theoretical physicist in the university of

Dnipro Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

(then Dnipropetrovsk). In 1938 he went, via the Institute for Astrophysics in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

, to

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, where he became an assistant to

Egil Hylleraas Egil Andersen Hylleraas (May 15, 1898 – October 28, 1965) was a Norwegian theoretical physicist known for creating a method for predicting the ground state energy of two-electron atoms and trial wave functions for many-electron atoms. Biogr ...

at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

. He also briefly worked at the Technical University of Trondheim with Johan Holtsmark, who was building a

Van de Graaff generator A Van de Graaff generator is an electrostatic generator which uses a moving belt to accumulate electric charge on a hollow metal globe on the top of an insulated column, creating very high electric potentials. It produces very high voltage direct ...

there. With the

German occupation of Norway The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany during the Second World War began on 9 April 1940 after Operation Weserübung. Conventional armed resistance to the German invasion ended on 10 June 1940, and Nazi Germany controlled Norway until th ...

he fled to

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. In 1941 the Nazi German state stripped him of his

German citizenship German nationality law details the conditions by which an individual is a national of Germany. The primary law governing these requirements is the Nationality Act, which came into force on 1 January 1914. Germany is a member state of the Euro ...

, and in 1943 recognition of his doctorate was revoked. He became a Norwegian citizen in 1947.B. Owren, Kongelige Norske Videnskapers Selskap Skrifter 4, 149-155 (2011). After the Second World War, from 1949 to 1968, he was a professor in Trondheim; from 1960 he was head of the applied mathematics department. In Norway he built up his research group in numerical analysis, and part of the introduction of digital computers, such as GIER, the first computer at Trondheim. From 1968 he held the chair for Mathematical Methods in Natural Sciences and Numerics at

Heidelberg University Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...

References

* Stefanie Harrecker: ''Degradierte Doktoren : die Aberkennung der Doktorwürde an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus'', München : Utz, 2007 . Kurzbio S. 346 *Claude Brezinski, Some pioneers of extrapolation methods, in

Adhemar Bultheel Adhemar François Bultheel (born 1948) is a Belgian mathematician and computer scientist, the former president of the Belgian Mathematical Society. He is a prolific book reviewer for the Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society and for the Euro ...

, Ronald Cools (Hrsg.), The birth of numerical analysis, World Scientific 2010, S. 10 (Biographie)

External links

Obituary at the University of Heidelberg
{{DEFAULTSORT:Romberg, Werner 20th-century German physicists 20th-century German mathematicians Numerical analysts Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Norway 1909 births 2003 deaths Academic staff of Heidelberg University Academic staff of the Norwegian Institute of Technology

See also

References

External links