Martha Mechthild Ingeborg Seynsche (21 October 1905 in

Barmen Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which merged with four other towns in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal. Barmen, together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the first electric ...

– 27 June 1994 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

) was a German mathematician. She was one of the first women to be allowed to earn a doctorate on a mathematical topic in Göttingen.

Life and work

Her father Johannes Seynsche (1857–1925) was a professor and senior teacher at the Unterbarmer Higher Girls' School. Her mother was Anna Seynsche (1882–1943), née Limbach. Ingeborg passed her

Abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...

in Unterbarmen in 1924. She then studied in Marburg and Göttingen, and in 1929 passed the state examination for teachers in pure and applied mathematics and physics. She went on to become an assistant at the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen. in 1930, Seynsche received her doctorate in philosophy from the Georg-August University, now

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

. The topic of her dissertation with

Richard Courant Richard Courant (January 8, 1888 – January 27, 1972) was a German-American mathematician. He is best known by the general public for the book '' What is Mathematics?'', co-written with Herbert Robbins. His research focused on the areas of real ...

was: ''On the theory of almost periodic sequences of numbers (Zur Theorie der fastperiodischen Zahlfolgen).'' It was a topic from the theory of almost periodic functions suggested by her advisors

Harald Bohr Harald August Bohr (22 April 1887 – 22 January 1951) was a Danish mathematician and footballer. After receiving his doctorate in 1910, Bohr became an eminent mathematician, founding the field of almost periodic functions. His brother was the ...

and

Alwin Walther Alwin Oswald Walther (6May 18984January 1967) was a German mathematician, engineer and professor. He is one of the pioneers of mechanical computing technology in Germany. Life Alwin Walther was born in May 1898 in Reick near Dresden. From 191 ...

. Later she dealt, among other things, with the calculation of function tables (with Alwin Walther) and the two-sided surface ornaments. She also solved the queen problem for arbitrary ''n''.

Personal life

She married physicist

Friedrich Hund Friedrich Hermann Hund (4 February 1896 – 31 March 1997) was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules. He is known for the Hund's rules to predict the electron configuration of chemical elements. His work on H ...

(1896–1997) in

on 17 March 1931. The family had six children:

Gerhard Hund Gerhard Friedrich Hund (4 February 1932 – 21 June 2024) was a German chess player, mathematician and computer scientist. Biography Gerhard Hund was the oldest son of physicist Friedrich Hund (1896–1997) and mathematician Ingeborg Seynsch ...

(1932–2024), Dietrich (1933–1939), Irmgard (b. 1934), Martin (1937–2018), Andreas (b. 1940) and Erwin (1941–2022). The chess grandmaster

Barbara Hund Barbara Hund (born 10 October 1959 in Darmstadt, Germany) is a Swiss chess player who holds the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She is the daughter of Juliane and Gerhard Hund and the granddaughter of physicist Friedrich Hund and mathemat ...

(b. 1959) and chess player

Isabel Hund Isabel Hund (born 14 June 1962) is a German chess Chess Woman FIDE Master (WFM, 1990) who two-times won West Germany Women's Chess Championship (1980, 1989). Also she won Belgian Women's Chess Championship (1985). Private and work Isabel H ...

(b. 1962) are her granddaughters. Ingeborg wrote many letters to her eldest son, Gerhard. Letters from the years before her death are interesting. Ingeborg Seynsche's final resting place is in the

Munich Waldfriedhof The Munich Waldfriedhof is one of 29 cemeteries of Munich in Bavaria, Germany. It is one of the largest and most famous burial sites of the city, known for its park-like design and tombs of notable personalities. The Waldfriedhof is considered th ...

, where her husband and sister Gertrud and her son-in-law Dieter Pfirsch are also buried.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seynsche, Ingeborg 1905 births 1994 deaths German mathematicians German women mathematicians 20th-century German mathematicians 20th-century German women scientists 20th-century German people University of Göttingen alumni