Georg Aumann

Georg Aumann (November 11, 1906, Munich, Germany – August 4, 1980), was a German mathematician. He was known for his work in general topology and regulated functions. During World War II, he worked as part of a group of five mathematicians, recruited by Wilhelm Fenner, and which included Ernst Witt, Georg Aumann, Alexander Aigner, Oswald Teichmueller and Johann Friedrich Schultze, and lead by Wolfgang Franz, to form the backbone of the new mathematical research department in the late 1930s, which would eventually be called: Section IVc of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (abbr. OKW/Chi).  He also worked as a cryptanalyst, on the initial breaking of the most difficult cyphers. He also researched and developed cryptography theory.

Life
Born in Munich, George Aumann initially considered a career as a civil servant. From 1925, Aumann studied mathematics and physics at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich, among others with Professor Constantin Carathéodory and Professor Heinrich Tietze. He was promoted in 1931 to Dr.Phil. with a thesis titled: contributions to the theory of decomposition spaces (German:Beiträge zur Theorie der Zerlegungsräume) In 1933 he habilitated twice, at the Technical University of Munich, and at the University of Munich (with different degrees of postdoctoral dissertation). In 1934–35 he was appointed a Rockefeller scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton N.J. In 1936 he became an extraordinary professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. At the beginning of the war, he was conscripted for military service Appeals to a full professorship failed several times because he was regarded as politically unreliable among the Nazis Ministry of Education. In all these years his wife was an indispensable, prudent and energetic support to him. In 1949 he became full professor at the University of Würzburg and in 1950 at the University of Munich. In 1960 he moved to a professorship at the Technical University of Munich. After the war, he received an apology.

He dealt in particular with real analysis, but also with conformal illustrations, on the properties of complex polynomials, on band theory and cluster theory. From him comes a monograph in the Grundlehren series on real functions, a three-dimensional analysis textbook with Otto Haupt and a three-volume mathematics textbook for engineers.

In 1958 Prof. Dr. Georg Aumann became a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences In 1977 he became honorary doctor of the University of Erlangen and he was awarded the prize of Dr. rer. nat. h. c., Doctor rerum naturalium honoris causa.

Publications
The following are a small subset of his known publications.


 * Real Functions (German:Reelle Funktionen), Fundamentals of Mathematical Sciences, Springer Verlag, 2nd Edition 1969
 * Higher Mathematics (German:Höhere Mathematik), Volumes 1–3, BI Universitätsaschenbücher 1970/71
 * Ad artem ultimam: an introduction to the world of thought in mathematics (German:Ad artem ultimam: eine Einführung in die Gedankenwelt der Mathematik), Oldenbourg 1974
 * With Otto Haupt: Introduction to Real Analysis (German:Einführung in die reelle Analysis), 3 Volumes, De Gruyter, 3rd Edition 1974 to 1983
 * Approximation of functions (German:Approximation von Funktionen), in Robert Sauer, Istvan Szabo The mathematical tools of the engineer (German:Die mathematischen Hilfsmittel des Ingenieurs), Volume 3, Springer Verlag 1968