Prof. Dr. Hans Langmaack (born 7 May 1934 at Hof Helle in the

Steinburg district Steinburg () is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, administered from Itzehoe. It is bounded by (from the west and clockwise) the districts of Dithmarschen, Rendsburg-Eckernförde, Segeberg and Pinneberg (district), Pinneberg, and by the El ...

) is a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

mathematician and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

Life

Hans Langmaack attended the Bismarck School in

Elmshorn Elmshorn (; ) is a town in the district of Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is 30 km north of Hamburg on the small river Krückau, a tributary of the Elbe, and with about 50,000 inhabitants is the sixth-largest town in the sta ...

, where he received a prize in natural sciences (the Ernst Hermann Koelln Prize, 1951) and, before graduating from high school in 1954, completed an

analog computer An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computation machine (computer) that uses physical phenomena such as Electrical network, electrical, Mechanics, mechanical, or Hydraulics, hydraulic quantities behaving according to the math ...

for

spherical trigonometry Spherical trigonometry is the branch of spherical geometry that deals with the metrical relationships between the edge (geometry), sides and angles of spherical triangles, traditionally expressed using trigonometric functions. On the sphere, ge ...

as a mathematical year's work. After an internship in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

, he studied mathematics, physics, and logic at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

(and one semester in

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

) from the winter semester of 1954. In 1957, he passed the teaching examination, became a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, and received his doctorate in 1960 under

Heinrich Behnke Heinrich Adolph Louis Behnke (9 October 1898 in Horn – 10 October 1979 in Münster) was a German mathematician and rector at the University of Münster. Life and career He was born into a Lutheran family in Horn, a suburb of Hamburg. He att ...

with a dissertation on analysis in several

complex variable Complex analysis, traditionally known as the theory of functions of a complex variable, is the branch of mathematical analysis that investigates functions of complex numbers. It is helpful in many branches of mathematics, including algebraic g ...

s (construction of

holomorphic In mathematics, a holomorphic function is a complex-valued function of one or more complex variables that is complex differentiable in a neighbourhood of each point in a domain in complex coordinate space . The existence of a complex deri ...

hulls of unramified regions over

\mathbb C^n

). From 1960, Langmaack was an assistant to

Klaus Samelson Klaus Samelson (21 December 1918 – 25 May 1980) was a German mathematician, physicist, and computer pioneer in the area of programming language translation and push-pop stack algorithms for sequential formula translation on computers. Early ...

at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz () is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. It has been named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. it had approximately 32,000 students enrolled in around 100 a ...

and turned to computer science. From 1960 to 1962, he developed with Ursula Hill-Samelson the

Algol 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a ...

''Alcor Mainz 2002''

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

for

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

, further developed from 1962 to 1964 at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

(where Samelson moved in 1963 and where Langmaack followed him as an assistant and later senior assistant) to ''Alcor Munich 2002''. From 1966 to 1967, he was an assistant professor of Computer Science at the

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

, and in 1967 he qualified as a professor at the Technical University of Munich (on Lidskii's theorem, concerning

eigenvalue In linear algebra, an eigenvector ( ) or characteristic vector is a vector that has its direction unchanged (or reversed) by a given linear transformation. More precisely, an eigenvector \mathbf v of a linear transformation T is scaled by a ...

s of sums of

Hermitian matrices In mathematics, a Hermitian matrix (or self-adjoint matrix) is a complex square matrix that is equal to its own conjugate transpose—that is, the element in the -th row and -th column is equal to the complex conjugate of the element in the -th ...

). He was then a lecturer and scientific advisor at the Technical University of Munich and, from 1970, a full professor at the

University of Saarland Saarland University (, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in six faculties that cover all major f ...

. In 1974, he moved to the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel (Chair of Programming Languages and Compiler Construction). In 1999, he became a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

. Langmaack was involved in various industrial compiler projects (including

Lisp Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish notation#Explanation, prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, ...

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

, and Pascal) and

expert system In artificial intelligence (AI), an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as ...

s and worked on verified compilers and automated

software verification Software verification is a discipline of software engineering, programming languages, and theory of computation whose goal is to assure that software satisfies the expected requirements. Broad scope and classification A broad definition of verif ...

. From 1989 to 1995, Langaack participated in the EU ESPRIT ProCoS project on ''Provably Correct Systems'', as the site leader at Kiel. He has published on Chomsky grammars, among other subjects. In 1973, Langmaack was a

visiting scientist In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

at the

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (, UFRJ) is a public university, public research university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest federal university in the country and is one of the Brazilian centers of excellence in teaching and r ...

, in 1974 in

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

, and in 1981 at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. In 1980, he was a co-initiator (with

Friedrich L. Bauer Friedrich Ludwig "Fritz" Bauer (10 June 1924 – 26 March 2015) was a German pioneer of computer science and professor at the Technical University of Munich. Life Bauer earned his Abitur in 1942 and served in the Wehrmacht during World War ...

and Klaus Indermark) of the biennial colloquium series ''Programmiersprachen und Grundlagen der Programmierung'' (KPS, Programming Languages and Fundamentals of Programming). In 1998, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the

. A

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

volume was published for his retirement in 1999.

Publications

* with Albert A. Grau, Ursula Hill: ''Handbook of Automatic Computation I b: Translation of Algol 60'' (''Fundamentals of the Mathematical Sciences'', Vol. 137).

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, 1967. * with Peter Kandzia: ''Informatics: Programming.'' Teubner, Stuttgart, 1973, .

References

External links

Homepage

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

*
Hans Langmaack
in the database

zbMATH zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and applied mathematics, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastru ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Langmaack, Hans 1934 births Living people People from Steinburg University of Münster alumni German computer scientists Formal methods people 20th-century German mathematicians Purdue University faculty Academic staff of the University of Kiel Academic staff of Saarland University Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich