Various Hirzebruch obituaries

  • Lecture about Fritz Hirzebruch (1927-2012): slides, video. Oberwolfach, 29 May, 2012.
    Photo taken by Stefan Friedl at Hirzebruch's last lecture, MPIM, 23 April, 2012.
    Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (30 May, 2012).
    Die Zeit (30 May, 2012).
    Bonn General-Anzeiger obituary (9 June, 2012). English translation.
    New York Times obituary (11 June, 2012)
    London Times obituary (22 June, 2012)
    London Times tribute by A.Ranicki (29 June, 2012)
    London Mathematical Society Newsletter obituary by M.Atiyah (July 2012).
    Daily Telegraph obituary (28 August, 2012)

    • Hirzebruchiana

  • Ida's Hirzebruch signature dish, baked on the occasion of the visit of Fritz Hirzebruch to Edinburgh in September 2010. The bread spelled out the celebrated Hirzebruch signature theorem. The photograph was used in the June 2012 Bonn General Anzeiger obituary of Fritz, with the caption A mathematical communion. Here is an actual Hirzebruch signature in the Sütterlinschrift, the handwriting version of the Gothic Fraktur typeface. I told Fritz once that my German grandmother had been taught it at school at the end of the 19th century. He replied that he had been taught it at school in the 1930's, signed his name in it, adding with wry amusement that he remembered the abolition of the Sütterlinschrift in 1941 on account of its erroneously attributed Jewish origins.

    • The 2010 Hirzebruch-Kreck interviews

    Fritz Hirzebruch was interviewed by Matthias Kreck at the Hausdorff Institute in Bonn in December 2010 under the auspices of the oral history project of the Simons Foundation.
    The interview is posted in 34 segments on the Simons Foundation website.
    Unfortunately it is very hard to view the segments online, and it is impossible to download them directly from the website for local viewing.
    But it is now possible to download the segments by right-clicking ("Save Link As...") on each of the 34 links below. The total takes up about 5Gb hard drive space
  • 01: Hirz_WWII.mp4
  • 02: Hirz_Becoming_a_mathematician.mp4
  • 03: Hirz_Teachers_at_Munster.mp4
  • 04: Hirz_Going_to_geometry.mp4
  • 05: Hirz_How_mathematics_changed.mp4
  • 06: Hirz_Two_advisors_first_two_papers.mp4
  • 07: Hirz_First_job_at_Erlangen.mp4
  • 08: Hirz_Princeton_1952.mp4
  • 09: Hirz_Working_with_Kodaira_and_Spencer.mp4
  • 10: Hirz_About_Kodaira_Spencer_and_Borel.mp4
  • 11: Hirz_The_signature_theorem.mp4
  • 12: Hirz_Riemann-Roch_theorem.mp4
  • 13: Hirz_Raoul_Bott.mp4
  • 14: Hirz_Topological_methods.mp4
  • 15: Hirz_ICM_1954_Amsterdam.mp4
  • 16: Hirz_The_job_at_Bonn.mp4
  • 17: Hirz_Bonn_and_the_first_Arbeitstagung.mp4
  • 18: Hirz_Algebraic_Topology_Symposium_Mexico_1956.mp4
  • 19: Hirz_On_joint_papers.mp4
  • 20: Hirz_Contacts_with_Chern.mp4
  • 21: Hirz_The_invention_of_K_theory.mp4
  • 22: Hirz_Arbeitstagung_highlights_through_1965.mp4
  • 23: Hirz_Mathematics_at_Bonn.mp4
  • 24: Hirz_Max_Planck_Institute.mp4
  • 25: Hirz_Hirzebruchs_1995_retirement.mp4
  • 26: Hirz_Surface_singularities.mp4
  • 27: Hirz_Working_with_students.mp4
  • 28: Hirz_Unification_of_German_mathematics_societies.mp4
  • 29: Hirz_Contacts_with_Israel.mp4
  • 30: Hirz_Contacts_with_foreign_mathematicians.mp4
  • 31: Hirz_Closest_mathfriends.mp4
  • 32: Hirz_What_is_the_use_of_mathematics.mp4
  • 33: Hirz_New_fields_of_interest_in_mathematics.mp4
  • 34: Hirz_Oberwolfach.mp4