Faculty of Mathematics and Computer ScienceHistory

Mathematics has been taught at Heidelberg University since its foundation in 1386. Arithmetics and geometry, as subjects of the artes liberales, were initially taught outside of the subject, for example by the famous cosmographer Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), whom Heidelberg honored with a fountain on Karlsplatz and whose portrait could be seen on every one hundred D-Mark bill. Sebastian Münster held a professorship for Hebrew Studies, which was poorly endowed, so that after only three years of teaching, in 1527, he accepted a call to Basel. The first chair for mathematics was established in 1547 and occupied by the doctor Jakob Curio (1497-1572).

The transfer of Heidelberg to the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1806 brought about a new beginning. The university was restructured and turned into a state-funded educational institution. As a result, mathematics experienced a second great heyday from 1850 to 1920, which is associated with the following names: Ludwig Otto Hesse (1811-1874; Hessian matrix, Hesse normal form), Immanuel Lazarus Fuchs (1833-1902; Fuchsian groups), Leo Königsberger (1837-1921; elliptical functions and differential equations), Moritz Benedikt Cantor (1829-1920; history of mathematics), Paul Gustav Stäckel (1862-1919; differential geometry, number theory and history of mathematics), and Oskar Perron (1880-1975; Dirichlet problem and continued fractions). Hesse, Fuchs and Königsberger knew how to gather a large crowd of highly talented students, not a few of whom later became very famous. Max Noether (1844-1921), for example, found his way to Heidelberg in the summer of 1867, and David Hilbert (1862-1943) in the summer of 1881. Another one of these celebrities was Sofja Kowalewskaja (1850-1891), who, as a Heidelberg student and the first female professor in Europe, consistently challenged the idea that mathematics was a purely male subject.

In 1904 the III. International Congress of Mathematics – on the initiative of Königsberger and under the presidency of Heinrich Weber (1842-1913), who had completed his habilitation in Heidelberg in 1866, brought the most important mathematicians of the time to Heidelberg.

The development of the Mathematical Institute after the Second World War was strongly influenced by Seifert, Hans Maaß (1911-1992; function theory, including Maass wave forms), William Threlfall (1888-1949; topology), and Friedrich Karl Schmidt (1901-1977; algebra and number theory). Maaß carried out groundbreaking work in the field of automorphic functions. Seifert and Threlfall laid the foundation for Heidelberg's worldwide reputation as a center of topology. Schmidt founded an arithmetic-algebraic school here. The later traditional focal points of pure mathematics in Heidelberg with the mathematical areas of algebra, analysis, function theory, geometry, topology and number theory evolved from the continuation of the existing areas of work. A profile came into being that is still recognized scientifically to this day. This period also saw the move of the faculty from Heidelberg's old town, where it had last been housed in the Friedrichsbau at Bunsen-Platz, to a newly built institute building on the natural sciences campus in Neuenheimer Feld.

An important milestone in the development of the faculty as it is today was the founding of the Institute of Applied Mathematics in 1957. Over the course of the following years, the Mathematical Institute and the Institute for Applied Mathematics expanded considerably in terms of personnel. Important and guiding appointments in this expansion phase, with a formative effect on the later development, were the appointments of the colleagues Albrecht Dold (1928-2011; topology), Dieter Puppe (1930-2005; topology), Willi Jäger (*1940; applied analysis), Gerd Müller (1923-2006; mathematical logic), Werner Romberg (1909-2003; numerics) and Peter Roquette (*1927; algebra and number theory) in the years 1963-1974.

At this time, the Institute of Applied Mathematics rapidly developed focal points in the areas of applied analysis, numerics and optimization, and statistics. This development led to the foundation of the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) in 1987. The IWR - although not part of the faculty itself - was a novelty for the time with considerable charisma which made it possible for Heidelberg mathematics to integrate a large number of its fields of work into interdisciplinary research and teaching. Traditionally, important cooperation partners of the IWR and the faculty are above all the Heidelberg faculties of biology, chemistry and physics as well as non-university research institutions, for example in industry. For some years now, however, there has also been increased cooperation with disciplines of the humanities.