23 Facts About Alfred Pringsheim

Alfred Pringsheim was a German mathematician and patron of the arts.

Alfred Pringsheim was the father-in-law of the author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.

Alfred Pringsheim came from an extremely wealthy Silesian merchant family with Jewish roots.

Alfred Pringsheim was the first-born child and only son of the Upper Silesian railway entrepreneur and coal mine owner Rudolf Pringsheim and his wife Paula, nee Deutschmann.

Alfred Pringsheim attended the Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau, where he excelled in music and mathematics.

In 1886 Alfred Pringsheim was appointed associate professor of mathematics there, and in 1901 full professor.

Alfred Pringsheim was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1898, a position he held until 1938, and was a corresponding member of the Gottingen Academy of Sciences.

Alfred Pringsheim was awarded membership in the Leopoldina, Germany's oldest academy of natural sciences.

Alfred Pringsheim considered himself to be a German citizen who no longer followed the "Mosaic belief".

In 1878 Alfred Pringsheim married the Berlin actress Gertrude Hedwig Anna Dohm, whose mother was the Berlin advocate of women's rights Hedwig Dohm.

Alfred Pringsheim's first-born son, Erik, was exiled to Argentina because of his dissolute life and gambling debts and died there at an early age.

Alfred Pringsheim later became the wife of the author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.

Besides mathematics, ever since his youth Alfred Pringsheim was intensively occupied with music, and adapted various compositions of Richard Wagner for the piano.

Alfred Pringsheim's was the largest and most important private collection of majolica in Germany consisting of 440 pieces.

Alfred Pringsheim collected enamels, stained-glass panels, tapestries, and paintings by Franz von Lenbach.

In mathematical analysis, Alfred Pringsheim studied real and complex functions, following the power-series-approach of the Weierstrass school.

Alfred Pringsheim published numerous works on the subject of complex analysis, with a focus on the summability theory of infinite series and the boundary behavior of analytic functions.

Besides his research in analysis, Alfred Pringsheim wrote articles for the Enzyklopadie der mathematischen Wissenschaften on the fundamentals of arithmetic and on number theory.

Alfred Pringsheim had a deep, early interest in music and was especially fascinated by the works of Richard Wagner.

Alfred Pringsheim corresponded with Wagner personally, and he took Wagner's letters with him when he went into exile to Switzerland.

Alfred Pringsheim was even once involved in a duel because someone had insulted Wagner.

Alfred Pringsheim had a sizeable monthly income as a full professor at the university.

Alfred Pringsheim had to sell his marvellous mathematics library which contained many precious books dating back to the sixteenth century.