Wolfgang Haack (1902-1994)

The electronic computing device was becoming the primary means of calculation in industrial research, and Berlin also needed such a machine to prevent the Technische Universität from deteriorating to a second class academic institution, noted a far-sighted task force at the Technische Universität Berlin, set up by Wolfgang Haack in 1953.

Wolfgang Haack was born in Gotha on 24 April 1902, and first studied mechanical engineering in Hanover, followed by Mathematics in Jena, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1926 for the thesis Die Bestimmung von Flächen, deren geodätische Linien durch die Abbildung in die (x;y) Ebene (durch x=u; y=v) in Kegelschnitte übergehen (The determination of areas whose geodetic lines become conic sections when depicted in the (x;y) plane (through x=u; y=v)). He then studied in Hamburg, before going to the TH Stuttgart as an assistant and qualified as a university lecturer at the TH Danzig (now Gdansk) in 1929 with a paper on affine differential geometry. In 1935 he moved to the TH Berlin before following a call to the TH Karlsruhe in 1937. Although the TH Berlin did invite him to work there in 1944, Wolfgang Haack was unable to take up the post because of the war. In 1949 he was finally named by the TU Berlin as the successor to Georg Hamel as Professor of Mathematics and Mechanics. In 1964 Haack was called to the new chair for numerical mathematics, a position he was to hold until being given emeritus status in 1968.

These two chairs showed that Haack had distinguished himself in a variety of fields. As a mathematician, he had initially concerned himself with geometry, in particular with differential geometry, before he turned to technical questions in 1936, publishing works on gas dynamics and differential equations, for example. Later at the Technische Universität Berlin, he was also involved with technical problems, writing a number of papers on the automation of air traffic control. His most important mathematical research during his time at the TU dealt with the theory of partial differential equations, to which he contributed a number of fundamental findings. Furthermore, he succeeded in motivating young scientists to make productive contributions, so that a number of postdoctoral theses and around a dozen dissertations were written on the subject of differential equations at the TU Berlin during those years.

However, the TU Berlin not only had much to thank the researcher and lecturer Wolfgang Haack for, but it also had to acknowledge him as an organiser, for his name is inseparably linked with the introduction of the computer to the Technische Universität. When, after the war, he found out more about electronic computers, he was seized by their future importance for science, and he founded a working group for electronic computing devices in 1950. During the years to come, Haack tried to have a computer installed at the TU Berlin and to this end contacted Konrad Zuse. The biggest handicap was finance, and Haack was turned down by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) as this body considered it perfectly satisfactory for Germany's Universities that Göttingen, Darmstadt and Munich were actively working in the area of electronic computers. In response he managed to obtain donations from a number of companies, finally acquiring the funds needed so that the TU Berlin's first computer could begin work in 1958, thanks above all to his work.

Lit.: Differentialgeometrie. 2 Volumes. Wolfenbüttel and Hanover 1948. - Elementare Differentialgeometrie. Basel and Stuttgart 1955. - Vorlesungen über Partielle und Pfaffsche Differentialgleichungen (with Wolfgang Wendland). Basel and Stuttgart 1969.

[F. H.]