Karin Reich

Karin Anna Reich (born October 13, 1941 in Munich) is a German math historian.

Early years

In 1960 she attended Luis High School in Munich. She studied mathematics, physics and astronomy in Munich (diploma 1966 Fundamentals of the Theory of Relativity) and Zurich.

Career

From 1967 to 1973 she was a scientific assistant at the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Institute for the History of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, where in 1973 she and Helmuth Gericke graduated.^[1] In 1980 she completed her time in Munich, publishing The development of tensor calculus, in 1994 in a revised form as a book.

In 1980 she became Professor of the History of Natural Science and Engineering at the Stuttgart College of Librarianship. In 1980/81 and 1981/82 she had a teaching assignment for the History of Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1981 she represented the Department of History of Science at the University of Hamburg. In 1982, she became associate professor and in 1988 Professor for History of Mathematics at the University of Stuttgart. From 1994 until her retirement she was a professor at the Institute for the History of Natural Science, Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Hamburg, where she succeeded Christoph J. Scriba as director.

Publications include biographies of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Michael Stifel and François Viète. With Gericke, Reich produced an annotated translation of Analyticam In artem Isagoge from 1591. She wrote a history of vector-and tensor and differential geometry. With Kurt Vogel, Gericke and Reich reissued John Tropfke's history of elementary mathematics.

Reich is a member of the Joachim-Jungius Society and the Academy of Sciences-profit (Erfurt).

Writings (selection)

• Carl Friedrich Gauss, Munich 1977
• The development of tensor calculus. From the absolute differential calculus to relativity theory, Birkhauser 1994
• Editor (with Alexander Kreuzer) Emil Artin, Rauner Verlag 2007
• with Horst Schmidt-Böcking : Otto Stern . Physicists, thinkers, Nobel Prize winner . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main2011, ISBN 978-3-942921-23-7 .

Literature

• Gudrun Wolf Schmidt (eds.): "There is no particular way for kings to geometry". Festschrift for Karin Reich . Rauner, Augsburg, 2007, ISBN 978-3-936905-23-6 .
• Odefey Alexander (ed.): The History of mathematical sciences. Festschrift for the 65th Karin Reich Birthday . Publisher of history of science and technology, including Diepholz, 2009, ISBN 978-3-928186-80-3 .

References