Wolfgang Franz (mathematician)
Wolfgang Franz (born October 4, 1905 in Magdeburg, Germany; died April 26, 1996) was a German mathematician who specialized in topology particularly in 3-manifolds, which he generalized to higher dimensions. He is known for the Reidemeister–Franz torsion. He also made important contributions to the theory of Lens space. During World War II he led a group of five mathematicians, recruited by Wilhelm Fenner, and which included Ernst Witt, Georg Aumann, Alexander Aigner, Oswald Teichmueller and Johann Friedrich Schultze, to form the backbone of the new mathematical research department in the late 1930's, which would eventually be called: Section IVc of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (abbr. OKW/Chi).
Wolfgang Franz was the son of an Chief Auditor (German:Oberstudiendirektor) and studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Kiel (after his high school diploma in Kiel) with exams in Berlin, Vienna and Halle. In 1930 he passed the Lehramt examination in Kiel. He was promoted in 1930 to Dr Phil on Hilbert's Irreduzibilitätssatz problem, with a doctoral thesis titled: Investigations on Hilbert's irreducibility (German:Untersuchungen zum Hilbertschen Irreduzibilitätssatz) in Halle, his doctoral advisor was Helmut Hasse (after he had started a dissertation with a different topic under Ernst Steinitz, but he died). Together with Hasse, Franz went to Marburg, where he was assistant to Hasse from 1930 to 1934, and remained there when Hasse received a call to Gottingen in 1934. Working with Hasse, he dealt with algebraic number theory and produced a script of Hassen's lecture on class-body theory. In 1934 he joined the SA, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, to increase his career chances. In 1936, Franz Habilited in the field of algebraic topology under Kurt Reidemeister in Marburg. In 1937 he moved to the University of Giessen, where he taught as a lecturer from 1939 onwards.
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