Papers of Richard Von Mises

Richard Von Mises (1883-1953), Austrian-American mathematician and engineer, taught at Harvard University beginning in 1939, holding the position of Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics from 1944 to 1953. He received his doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology in 1908. The following year, he was appointed professor of applied mathematics at the University of Strassburg, Germany (now France). He maintained this position until 1918, when he was forced to leave Strasbourg after Germany was defeated in World War I. During the war, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army as a test pilot and a flying instructor. In 1920, Von Mises became director of the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Berlin, where he began working with his future wife, mathematician Hilda Geiringer (1893-1973).

Although a Roman Catholic, Von Mises was classified as Jewish by the Nazi government, leading him to flee Germany in 1933. He then accepted a teaching position at the University of Istanbul, where he continued to work with Geiringer. In 1939, he joined the staff of Harvard University and was appointed as Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics in 1944. He then became, in rapid succession, Associate Professor in 1943 and Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics in 1946. While at Harvard, he continued his work in mathematics, probability, and fluid mechanics. From 1948 to 1953, Von Mises edited Advances in Applied Mechanics. He also served as a civilian with the United States Navy and the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Von Mises married fellow scholar Hilda Geiringer in 1943. Throughout his career, he made notable contributions to the study of elasticity and was also a leading authority on the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He died in 1953.

Hilda Geiringer (1893-1973), Austrian-American mathematician and pioneering geneticist, was an Assistant Fellow in mathematics at Harvard University from 1955 to 1959. Geiringer was born in Vienna, Austria, and received her PhD in 1917 from the University of Vienna. In 1921, she began working at the Institute of Applied Mathematics at the University of Berlin under Austrian-American mathematician and engineer and future husband, Richard Von Mises. Geiringer remained at the University of Berlin until 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power; under the Civil Service Law, she lost her right to teach because she was Jewish. After a brief stay as a research associate at the Institute of Mechanics in Belgium, she joined Von Mises at Istanbul University in Turkey, where she stayed for five years as his assistant and as a lecturer.

Geiringer left Turkey in 1939, after the government declined to renew her contract. She briefly stayed in Lisbon, Portugal while waiting for an American visa, then emigrated to the United States, where she became a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College. In 1943, she married Von Mises, who was at that time teaching at Harvard. In 1944, Geiringer became Professor and Chair of the mathematics department at Wheaton College, where she remained until her retirement in 1959. In 1954, while still teaching at Wheaton, she also began working at Harvard, completing and editing many of Von Mises’ unfinished works, following his death in 1953. Her funding to work at Harvard was obtained through a grant from the Office of Naval Research, until Harvard offered her a temporary position as a Research Fellow in Mathematics.

Throughout Geiringer's career in the United States, she was rejected from many teaching positions because of her gender and her Jewish ethnicity. Geiringer died in 1973.