15 Facts About Max Dehn

Max Wilhelm Dehn was a German mathematician most famous for his work in geometry, topology and geometric group theory.

Dehn was a student of David Hilbert, and in his habilitation in 1900 Dehn resolved Hilbert's third problem, making him the first to resolve one of Hilbert's well-known 23 problems.

Max Dehn was born to a family of Jewish origin in Hamburg, Imperial Germany.

Max Dehn studied the foundations of geometry with Hilbert at Gottingen in 1899, and obtained a proof of the Jordan curve theorem for polygons.

In 1910 Max Dehn published a paper on three-dimensional topology in which he introduced Max Dehn surgery and used it to construct homology spheres.

Max Dehn stated Dehn's lemma, but an error was found in his proof by Hellmuth Kneser in 1929.

The word problem for groups, called the Max Dehn problem, was posed by him in 1911.

Also in 1912, Max Dehn invented what is known as Max Dehn's algorithm and used it in his work on the word and conjugacy problems for groups.

In 1922 Max Dehn succeeded Ludwig Bieberbach at Frankfurt, where he stayed until he was forced to retire in 1935.

Max Dehn stayed in Germany until January 1939, when he fled to Copenhagen, and then to Trondheim, Norway, where he took a position at the Norwegian Institute of Technology.

Max Dehn died in Black Mountain, North Carolina in 1952.

In March 1944, Max Dehn was invited to give two talks at Black Mountain College on the philosophy and history of mathematics.

Max Dehn noted in a letter that a lecture on an advanced mathematical topic didn't seem appropriate given the audience.

Max Dehn's classes had an emphasis on the way shapes relate to each other, a concept that can be useful in artistic mediums.

Max Dehn enjoyed the forested mountains found in Black Mountain, and would often hold class in the woods, giving lectures during hikes.