Subject: [Fwd: Vietoris obit (110)]
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 17:35:14 -0400
From: jim stasheff <stasheff@email.unc.edu>
To: dondavis <dmd1@lehigh.edu>

Peter Freyd wrote:
>
>                 Copyright 2002 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
>                        Deutsche Presse-Agentur
>
>                         April 12, 2002, Friday
>
> SECTION: Miscellaneous
>
> LENGTH: 301 words
>
> HEADLINE: Austria's oldest citizen, mathematician Vietoris, dies aged
> 110
>
> DATELINE: Innsbruck
>
> BODY: Austria's oldest citizen Leopold Vietoris, a pioneer of topology
> and technical mathematics in the 1920s, has died at the age of 110, it
> was announced on Friday.
>
> He died in his home town of Innsbruck Thursday night. His death was
> only a few weeks after that of his 101-year-old wife Maria, with whom
> he had been married 66 years.
>
> Retired Innsbruck University professor Vietoris was one of Austria's
> most distinguished mathematicians, and an international figure of
> repute.
>
> He published a total of 80 mathematical papers, the last one seven
> years ago at the age of 103.
>
> In his doctoral thesis at Vienna University in 1921 on "steady
> quantities", he set out a number of fundamental definitions and rules
> which have since become an integral part of the discipline of
> topology.
>
> In the international mathematical world his name was well known, and
> immortalized in such concepts as "Vietoris Cycles" and the
> "Vietoris-Begles Formula".
>
> One of the tools of all modern topologists are the "Mayer-Vietoris
> Sequences".
>
> He developed them together with Walther Mayer, who went on to become
> an assistant of Albert Einstein and teacher at the Institute of Higher
> Mathematical Studies at Princeton, USA.
>
> Leopold Vietoris was born on June 4, 1891 at Radkersburg in Austria.
>
> He started his studies of mathematics at Vienna Technical University
> in 1910, but was called up to the army in World War One, and therefore
> only managed to finish in 1920.
>
> For the next seven years he was a lecturer in Graz and Vienna, before
> being awarded a professorship at Innsbruck University. With only short
> breaks, he remained there until his retirement in 1961.
>
> Vietoris, for decades a keen mountain climber and skier, was given
> Austria's highest award for science and the arts in 1973. dpa qu sc