University of Tübingen
Technical University of Munich
Known for
Lenz-Barlotti classification[1]
Awards
Euler Medal (1995)
Scientific career
Fields
Geometry, combinatorics
Thesis
Zurückführung einiger Integrale auf einfachere mit Anwendungen auf Abbildungsaufgaben (1952)
Doctoral advisor
Josef Lense
Doctoral students
Ludwig Danzer Dieter Jungnickel
Hanfried Lenz (22 April 1916 in Munich – 1 June 2013 in Berlin) was a German mathematician, who is mainly known for his work in geometry and combinatorics.
Hanfried Lenz was the eldest son of Fritz Lenz an influential German geneticist, who is associated with Eugenics and hence also with the Nazi racial policies during the Third Reich. He was also the older brother of Widukind Lenz, a geneticist. He started to study mathematics and physics at the University of Tübingen, but interrupted his studies from 1935 to 1937 to do a ( at this time, in Weimar Republic voluntary ) military service. After that he continued to study in Munich, Berlin and Leipzig. In 1939 when World War II broke out in Europe, he became a soldier in the western front and during a vacation he passed the exams for his teacher certification. He married Helene Ranke in 1943 and 1943–45 he worked on radar technology in a laboratory near Berlin.
After World War II Hanfried Lenz was classified as a "follower" by the denazification process. He started to work as a math and physics teacher in Munich and in 1949 he became an assistant at the Technical University of Munich. He received his PhD in 1951 and his Habilitation in 1953. He worked as a lecturer until he became an associate professor in 1959. In 1969 he finally became a full professor at the Free University of Berlin and worked there until his retirement in 1984.
He was also politically active and in connection with his opposition to the rebuilding of the German army in the early 50s, he became a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1954. Later, partially due to being alienated by the student movement of the '60s, his leanings became more conservative again and in 1972 he left the SPD to join the Christian Democratic Union.
Hanfried Lenz is known for his work on the classification of projective planes and in 1954 he showed how one can introduce affine spaces axiomatically without constructing them from projective spaces or vector spaces. This result is now known as the theorem of Lenz. During his later years he also worked in the area of combinatorics and published a book on design theory (together with Dieter Jungnickel and Thomas Beth).
In 1995 the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications awarded the Euler Medal to Hanfried Lenz.
HanfriedLenz (22 April 1916 in Munich – 1 June 2013 in Berlin) was a German mathematician, who is mainly known for his work in geometry and combinatorics...
physician and a humanitarian. He was the younger brother of mathematician HanfriedLenz. [1][dead link] "Dictionary of medical eponyms". Whonamedit. Retrieved...
to the science of eugenics.": 30 Two of his sons are HanfriedLenz and Widukind Lenz. For Lenz, human genetics established that the connection between...
Berlin, graduating in 1975. He studied the finite difference method with HanfriedLenz and completed his Habilitation in 1978. He became a professor of mathematics...
a German geometer working in discrete geometry. He was a student of HanfriedLenz, starting his career in 1960 with a thesis about "Lagerungsprobleme"...
published in 1975 by Ronald Graham, answering a question posed in 1956 by HanfriedLenz; it takes the form of an irregular equidiagonal pentagon with an obtuse...
Kittel (1888–1948) Wilhelm Kube (1887–1943) Rudolf Lehmann (1890–1955) HanfriedLenz (1916–2013) Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (1906–1984)...
Gerald E. Brown, American theoretical physicist (born 1926). 1 June – HanfriedLenz, German mathematician (born 1916). 6 June – Jerome Karle, American chemist...
Legien Helmut Lehmann Jo Leinen Willi Lemke Alfred Lemmnitz Paul Lensch HanfriedLenz Willy Leow Wilhelm Leuschner Paul Levi Eugen Leviné Alfred Levy Kurt...
Lehr Ursula Lehr Helmut Lemke Vera Lengsfeld Carl Otto LenzHanfriedLenz Otto Lenz Wilhelm Lenz Ursula von der Leyen Christine Lieberknecht Ingbert Liebing...
1017/CBO9780511778810. ISBN 9780511778810. E.g., see Beth, Thomas; Jungnickel, Dieter; Lenz, Hanfried (1999). Design Theory (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 18....
Combinatorics. Archived from the original (PostScript) on 13 June 2007. Lenz, Hanfried; Ringel, Gerhard (1991), "A brief review on Egmont Köhler's mathematical...
that have ( n − 1 ) / 2 {\displaystyle (n-1)/2} copies of each cycle. Lenz, Hanfried; Ringel, Gerhard (1991), "A brief review on Egmont Köhler's mathematical...
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