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An Unpublished Letter of Student Ivan Supek from Leipzig to Professor Vladimir Varićak, Dated 8 December 1938
Ivica Martinović
; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
The correspondence of Dr. Vladimir Varićak (1865–1942), professor of mathematics at the University of Zagreb (1902–1936), was donated to the National and University Library in Zagreb on 8 July 1970 by his daughter-in-law, Milena Varićak. This collection contains a letter that Ivan Supek, a student of physics at the University of Leipzig in the academic year 1938/1939, wrote on 8 December 1938 from Leipzig to, by that time, retired professor Varićak. Despite his retirement, Varićak continued to lecture as honorary professor as in the winter semester 1938/1939, when he taught the Function Theory. In addition, he was the head of the Mathematical Institute, in which Josip Dvoraček worked as assistant at the time.
The letter of Ivan Supek casts additional light on the work of Vladimir Varićak as honorary professor of mathematics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. In order to supply Professor Varićak with the lectures of Professor Paul Koebe in the function theory, Supek managed to find a faithful script, not at the Mathematical Institute in Leipzig but among his fellow-students. Besides, Professor Koebe presented the Mathematical Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb with four of his most recent works (1936–1938). Professor Walter Schnee also sent four of his Reihen (1908) and a habilitation thesis Über Mittelwertformeln in der Theorie der Dirichletschen Reihen (1909).
The central part of the letter reveals Supek’s efforts to help Josip Dvoraček obtain his doctoral thesis in mathematics from Professor Koebe. From an earlier conversation with Professor Koebe, Supek anticipated the professor’s inclination to have his mathematical results spread also in Yugoslavia, while the content of their conversation held on 8 December 1938 he forwarded to Professor Varićak in the smallest of details: Dvoraček was to commence his preparations for the arrival in Leipzig on 1 April 1939 with the study of Koebe’s select works. The renowned German mathematician confided to the young Croat that he was inclined to mentor Dvoraček towards further elaboration of his “method of continuity”.
In the closing part of his letter, Ivan Supek describes his current preoccupations in the winter semester of 1938/1939: “The only lectures in the field of mathematics I currently listen to are Koebe’s in elliptic functions. At the moment I am dealing solely with quantum mechanics and I must admit that there, too, I already have too much mathematics. On Tuesday I am giving a seminar lecture (wave mechanics of atom in the electrical field).”
The letter of student Ivan Supek, which bears witness to his engagement in the development of science at the University of Zagreb and illuminates his work at Werner Heisenberg’s seminar at the University in Leipzig in the winter semester of 1938/1939, I have decided to publish as a contribution to the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the birth of the academician Ivan Supek, my professor at the postgraduate studies
in the Philosophy of Science in Interuniversity Centre in Dubrovnik. In this way, as chief editor of this journal, I wish to encourage scholars to come forward with similar material kept primarily in the archives of scientific institutions, which are indebted to the academician Supek and his work.
Keywords
Ivan Supek; Vladimir Varićak; Paul Koebe; Walter Schnee; Werner Heisenberg; University of Zagreb; University of Leipzig; function theory; quantum mechanics
Hrčak ID:
136585
URI
Publication date:
15.2.2015.
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