Stefan Cohn-Vossen

Stefan Cohn-Vossen (28 May 1902 – 25 June 1936) was a mathematician, who was responsible for Cohn-Vossen's inequality and the Cohn-Vossen transformation is also named after him.^[1] He proved the first version of the splitting theorem.

Stefan Cohn-Vossen
in Moscow, probably 1936
Born	(1902-05-28)28 May 1902 Breslau, Silesia
Died	25 June 1936(1936-06-25) (aged 34) Moscow, Soviet Union
Alma mater	Wrocław University
Known for	Cohn-Vossen's inequality
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Thesis	Singuläre Punkte reeller, schlichter Kurvenscharen, deren Differentialgleichung gegeben ist (1924)
Doctoral advisor	Adolf Kneser

He was also known for his collaboration with David Hilbert on the 1932 book Anschauliche Geometrie, translated into English as Geometry and the Imagination.^[2]

He was born in Breslau (then a city in the Kingdom of Prussia; now Wrocław in Poland). He wrote a 1924 doctoral dissertation at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław) under the supervision of Adolf Kneser.^[3] He became a professor at the University of Cologne in 1930.

He was barred from lecturing in 1933 under Nazi racial legislation, because he was Jewish.^[4] In 1934 he emigrated to the USSR, with some help from Herman Müntz.^[5] While there, he taught at Leningrad University. He died in Moscow from pneumonia.^[6]

See also

• Cohn-Vossen's inequality