Heinrich Heesch

Heinrich Heesch (* June 25th 1906 in Kiel, † July 26th 1995 in Hannover) was a German mathematician.

In Göttingen he worked on Group theory. 1933 Heesch witnessed the National Socialist cleanings among the university staff. Not willing to become member of the National Socialist organization of university teachers as required, he resigned from his university position in 1935 and worked privately at his parent's home in Kiel until 1948. During this time he did research on Tilings. 1955 Heesch began teaching at the Hannover Institute of Technology and worked on Graph theory. In this period Heesch did pioneer work in developing methods for a computer-aided proof of the then unproved Four color theorem. Between 1967 and 1971 Heesch came to the USA several times, where bigger and faster computers were available. Here Heesch co-operated with Y. Shimamoto (Brookhaven) and W. Haken (Urbana, Illinois). In the crucial phase of his project, the German national research fund DFG cancelled their financial support. After the 1977 success of Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken Heesch worked on refining and shortening the proof, even after his retirement.

Works

• Heinrich Heesch, Untersuchungen zum Vierfarbenproblemh, Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1969
• Bigalke, Hans-Günther (Hrsg.). Heinrich Heesch, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Bad Salzdetfurth 1986.

Literature on Heinrich Heesch's work

• Bigalke, Hans-Günther. Heinrich Heesch, Kristallgeometrie, Parkettierungen, Vierfarbenforschung, Basel 1988.

External links

• http://www.ifg.uni-kiel.de/eckenundkanten/hk-02_de.html Biography (in German)