Kurt Vogel (30 September 1888 – 27 October 1985) was a German historian of mathematics.

Life and work

Vogel was born in

Altdorf bei Nürnberg Altdorf bei Nürnberg ( , ; ) is a town in south-eastern Germany. It is situated east of Nuremberg, in the district Nürnberger Land. Its name literally means “Altdorf near Nuremberg”, to distinguish it from other Altdorfs. History Altdorf ...

to Johann Georg Vogel and Ehefrau Maria. He attended school in

Bayreuth Bayreuth ( or ; High Franconian German, Upper Franconian: Bareid, ) is a Town#Germany, town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtel Mountains. The town's roots date back to 11 ...

Schwabach Schwabach () is a German city of about 40,000 inhabitants near Nuremberg in the centre of the region of Franconia in the north of Bavaria. Together with the neighboring cities of Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen, Schwabach forms one of the three me ...

, and

Ansbach Ansbach ( , ; ) is a city in the Germany, German state of Bavaria. It is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk, administrative region of Mittelfranken, Middle Franconia. Ansbach is southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the river Fränk ...

. From 1907 to 1911, he studied mathematics and physics with

Max Noether Max Noether (24 September 1844 – 13 December 1921) was a German mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry and the theory of algebraic functions. He has been called "one of the finest mathematicians of the nineteenth century". He was the ...

Paul Gordan Paul Albert Gordan (27 April 1837 – 21 December 1912) was a German mathematician known for work in invariant theory and for the Clebsch–Gordan coefficients and Gordan's lemma. He was called "the king of invariant theory". His most famous ...

, and

Erhard Schmidt Erhard Schmidt (13 January 1876 – 6 December 1959) was a Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century. Schmidt was born in Tartu (), in the Governorate of Livonia (now ...

Erlangen Erlangen (; , ) is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 119,810 inhabitants (as of 30 September 2024), it is the smalle ...

, and with

Felix Klein Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...

, and

Otto Toeplitz Otto Toeplitz (1 August 1881 – 15 February 1940) was a German mathematician working in functional analysis., reprinted in Life and work Toeplitz was born to a Jewish family of mathematicians. Both his father and grandfather were ''Gymnasiu ...

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 ...

. He passed his examination to become a schoolteacher in 1911, then served as an army officer from 1913 to 1920 before taking a teaching post in Munich. In 1940, Vogel was appointed to a professorship at the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich 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 ...

, where he spent the remainder of his career. He studied a variety of mathematical texts from Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese scholars, such as the

Rhind Mathematical Papyrus The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP; also designated as papyrus British Museum 10057, pBM 10058, and Brooklyn Museum 37.1784Ea-b) is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics. It is one of two well-known mathematical papyri ...

. Self-taught in several ancient languages, Vogel produced German translations of

al-Khwarizmi Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi , or simply al-Khwarizmi, was a mathematician active during the Islamic Golden Age, who produced Arabic-language works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Around 820, he worked at the House of Wisdom in B ...

's ''On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals'' (from the Latin translation, ''Algoritmi de numero Indorum''), and the Chinese treatise ''

The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art ''The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art'' is a Chinese mathematics book, composed by several generations of scholars from the 10th–2nd century BCE, its latest stage being from the 1st century CE. This book is one of the earliest surviving ...

''. Vogel officially retired from his post in 1963, but founded and led the university's Institute for the History of Natural Science and Mathematics until 1970. In 1969 he was awarded the

George Sarton Medal The George Sarton Medal is the most prestigious award given by the History of Science Society. It has been awarded annually since 1955. It is awarded to a historian of science from the international community who became distinguished for "a lifet ...

for his contributions to the history of science.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vogel, Kurt 1888 births 1985 deaths 20th-century German historians 20th-century German mathematicians German historians of science