Eduard Helly

Eduard Helly (June 1, 1884, Vienna – 1943, Chicago) was a mathematician after whom Helly's theorem, Helly families, Helly's selection theorem, Helly metric, and the Helly–Bray theorem were named.

Helly earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1907, with two advisors, Wilhelm Wirtinger and Franz Mertens. He then continued his studies for another year at the University of Göttingen; Richard Courant, also studying there at the same time, tells a story of Helly disrupting one of Courant's talks, which fortunately did not prevent David Hilbert from eventually hiring Courant as an assistant. After returning to Vienna, Helly worked as a tutor, Gymnasium teacher, and textbook editor until World War I, when he enlisted in the Austrian army. He was shot in 1915, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Russians. In one prison camp in Berezovka, Siberia, he organized a mathematical seminar in which Tibor Radó, then an engineer, began his interest in pure mathematics. While held in another camp at Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, also in Siberia, Helly wrote important contributions on functional analysis.

After a complicated return trip, Helly finally came back to Vienna in 1920, married his wife (mathematician Elise Bloch) in 1921, and also in 1921 earned his habilitation. Unable to obtain a paid position at the university because he was seen as too old and too Jewish, he worked at a bank until the financial collapse of 1929, and then for an insurance company. After the takeover of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, he lost that job as well, and escaped to America. With the assistance of Albert Einstein he found teaching positions at two junior colleges in New Jersey, before moving with his wife to Chicago in 1941, to work for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. In Chicago, he suffered two heart attacks, and died from the second one.

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