Richard von Mises (1883–1953)

Richard von Mises was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Lviv, Ukraine). His parents were Adele (Landau) and Arthur Edler von Mises, a technical scientist. His brother Ludwig von Mises became a noted economist. Richard attended the Akademisches Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating with honors in Latin and mathematics in 1901. He studied mathematics, physics. and engineering at the Vienna University of Technology, and after graduation, was appointed as Georg Hamel's assistant in Brünn (now Brno). In 1905, while still a student, he published an article on the geometry of curves in the prestigious journal Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik. In 1908, von Mises was awarded a doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he became friends with classmate Philipp Frank, and received his habilitation to lecture on engineering. In 1909, at age 26, he was appointed professor of applied mathematics at the University of Strasbourg, then part of the German Empire. He became a pilot and in 1913 at Strasbourg, gave the first German university course on aviation. On the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a test pilot and flying instructor. After the war, von Mises had to leave Strasbourg, and became chair of hydrodynamics and aerodynamics at the Dresden Technische Hochschule. In 1920, he was appointed director and full professor at the new Institute of Applied Mathematics at the University of Berlin. When the Nazi regime rose to power in 1933, von Mises fled to Turkey, where he held the newly-created chair of pure and applied mathematics at the University of Istanbul. In 1939, he emigrated to the USA, where in 1944 he was appointed Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. In 1943, he married Hilda Geiringer, a mathematician who had been his assistant at the Institute of Applied Mathematics. He made advances in fluid and solid mechanics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, and probability theory. His book Positivism: A Study in Human Understanding (1951) summarized his views on science and life. He also was a leading authority on the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.