When did Hermann Weyl pass away?

Abstract

We show that in the existing bibliography there are many contradictory claims about the exact date of death of Hermann Weyl and, after a detailed exposition of the way we got our evidence, we demonstrate that Weyl died on 8 December 1955. The paper also shows up the fact that an authoritative intellectual biography on Weyl is yet to be written.

Acknowledgments

Martina Brajkovic, Monica Bussmann and Yvonne Voegeli (ETH Library) answered all our inquires while Erica Mosner (IAS Archives) allowed us digital access to many of Weyl's biographical materials. The telegram in Figure 1 is published with permission of the IAS. We also thank Eduardo Pérez Soler, supervising editor of Almira and Ostalé (2018), and the third author is grateful to the Centro de Investigación de Filosofía de la Ciencia y la Tecnología at University of A Coruña.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

José María Almira http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-4076

José Ángel Cid http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5934-4308

Julio Ostalé http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0489-0330

Notes

1 Website: https://www.newspapers.com/

2 Website: https://zeitungsarchiv.nzz.ch/

3 In German: ‘der in den Abendstunden des 8. Dezember an einem Herzschlag starb’.

4 The reader should not be surprised that the telegram in Figure 1 arrived at 16:37 even if Weyl died during the Abendstunden (18:00 to 24:00), as reported by Künzi, since there is a time difference of six hours between Princeton and Zurich.

5 Website: https://www.findagrave.com/