Lipót, or Leopold (in German), Klug (23 January 1854 – 24 March 1945) was a
Jewish-Hungarian
The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
, professor in the
Franz Joseph University
Royal Hungarian Franz Joseph University ( hu, Magyar Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem) was the second modern university in the Hungarian realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Founded in 1872, its seat was initially in Kolozsvár (Cluj ...
of
Kolozsvár.
Life and work
Klug attended the ''gymnasium'' of his hometown and entered in the
university of Budapest in 1872 where he graduated as docent in 1874. Between 1874 and 1893 he taught mathematics in the high school of Pozsony (now
Bratislava
Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...
in
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
). From 1893 to 1897 he was professor in a secondary school in Budapest and he obtained his habilitation in the university of Budapest. In 1897 he was appointed professor of
geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
in the
University of Kolozsvár
Royal Hungarian Franz Joseph University ( hu, Magyar Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem) was the second modern university in the Hungarian realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Founded in 1872, its seat was initially in Kolozsvár (Cluj ...
. He retired in 1917 and moved back to Budapest.
He died in 1944 or 1945 in strange circumstances: in the middle of the
Second world war
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and aged ninety-one years, he walked out of his home in Budapest and he never came back. Probably he was the victim of racial hate because he was of Jewish descent.
His work was greatly influenced by
Gyula König. His areas of research were
descriptive geometry
Descriptive geometry is the branch of geometry which allows the representation of three-dimensional objects in two dimensions by using a specific set of procedures. The resulting techniques are important for engineering, architecture, design and ...
and
synthetic geometry. During his retirement in Budapest he encouraged the young
Edward Teller (the father of the
hydrogen bomb
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
).
See also
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List of unsolved deaths
References
Bibliography
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Klug, Leopold
1854 births
1945 deaths
19th-century Hungarian mathematicians
20th-century Hungarian mathematicians
Hungarian Jews
Unsolved deaths