Albrecht Dold

Albrecht Dold

[Dana Scott]

Dear Categories:

Sad to think Albrecht Dold has passed away.  I met him when I
was a graduate student in Princeton from Fall 1955 to Spring 1958.
I remember a gentle and kind person with a twinkle in the eye and
a wry, lively sense of humor.  Everyone liked him, and he was much
in Fine Hall around Steenrod.  There were many visitors in that
period: Hirzebruch, Serre, Kan, Ioan James, to name a few, and Artin,
Moore, Milnor, Spenser/Kodaira were very active.  It was a great
time to visit Princeton, and his career really took off from that
period.

Here is some information I found about him on the internet:

Born: August 5, 1928, Triberg, Germany
Died: September 26, 2011, Neckargemünd, Germany

Education:

1948 - 1954 Studies of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, University of Heidelberg
1954 Ph.D., University of Heidelberg
 	"Über fasernweise Homotopieäquivalenz von Faserräumen" under Herbert Seifert
1958 Habilitation, University of Heidelberg
 	(Title not found.)

Positions:

1954 - 1956 Assistant, Institute of Mathematics, University of Heidelberg
1956 - 1958 Assistant, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
1958 - 1960 Lecturer, Institute of Mathematics, University of Heidelberg
1960 - 1962 Professor, Columbia University, New York
1962 - 1963 Full Professor, University of Zürich
1963 - 1996 Full Professor, University of Heidelberg
1984 - 1985 Präsident der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung
1991 - 1994 Sekretär der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse der Heidelberger Akademie
1995 - 1998 Vice-President, International Mathematical Union 

Career: 

Albrecht Dold was born on August 5, 1928 in Triberg (Black Forest), 
Germany. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of 
Heidelberg, then worked for some years at the Institute for Advanced 
Study in Princeton, at Columbia University, New York and at the 
University of Zürich. In 1963 he returned to Heidelberg, where he 
has stayed since, declining several offers to attractive positions 
elsewhere. A. Dold's seminal work in algebraic topology has brought 
him international recognition beyond the world of mathematics itself. 
In particular, his work on fixed-point theory has made his a household 
name in economics, and his book "Lectures on Algebraic Topology" a 
standard reference among economists as well as mathematicians.  He
had 19 students and 58 descendants.

He was a student of Herbert Seifert, who had 6 students and 205 descendants.
Seifert's first dissertation, "Konstruktion dreidimensionaler geschlossener 
Räume", was done under Threlfall in Dresden, 1930.  His second thesis, 
"Topologie dreidimensionaler gefaserter Räume", was done under van der 
Waerden, Leipzig,1932.  There is an interesting Wikipedia page on him,
but the one on Dold is not filled out.  Seifert became a friend and
long-term collaborator of Threlfall, and their book is well known. 

A co-student of Seifert's and a long-standing friend and collaborator
with Dold was Dieter Puppe, whose dissertation, "Zur Homotopie von 
Abbildungen eines Polyeders, was also finished in 1954.  He had
17 students and 93 descendants, but he died from a brain tumor
already in 2005.

Dold is survived by his wife, Dr. Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, a distinguished
historian of mathematics.  She was born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, in
1937, they were married in 1965, and she submitted her thesis, "Book of 
Assumptions by Aqatun", in 1977 in Amsterdam.



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