Hermann Weyl, Heinz Hopf und das Jahr 1930 an der ETH
Urs Stammbach
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
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Abstract
The year 1930 was a year of great significance for the ETH in Zurich, for the development of mathematics in Switzerland, and also for mathematics in general. Firstly, in this year the ETH celebrated its 75th anniversary; secondly, Hermann Weyl, left Zurich after 17 fruitful years at ETH and accepted the call to succeed David Hilbert in Göttingen; thirdly, to replace Weyl the ETH appointed Heinz Hopf, who subsequently built up an important school in algebraic topology; and finally, just before accepting the call to ETH in 1930, Heinz Hopf completed his influential paper, in which he described and classified the essential maps from the three dimensional sphere onto the two dimensionals sphere.
The present text is concerned with these four significant developments of the year 1930; central to the presentation are the eminent personalities of Hermann Weyl and Heinz Hopf.