Verena Huber-Dyson

Verena Huber-Dyson
Born Verena Esther Huber
(1923-05-06)May 6, 1923
Naples, Italy
Died March 12, 2016(2016-03-12) (aged 92)
Bellingham, Washington
Other names Verena Huber, Verena Haefeli
Residence Switzerland, United States, Canada
Citizenship Swiss, United States, Canada
Fields Logic, algebra
Institutions
Alma mater University of Zurich
Thesis Ein Dualismus als Klassifikationsprinzip in der abstrakten Gruppentheorie (1947)
Doctoral advisor Andreas Speiser
Spouses
Children

Verena Esther Huber-Dyson (May 6, 1923 – March 12, 2016) was a Swiss-American mathematician, known for work in group theory and formal logic.[1] She has been described as a "brilliant mathematician",[1] and has done research on the interface between algebra and logic, focusing on undecidability in group theory. At the time of her death she was emeritus faculty in the philosophy department of the University of Calgary, Alberta.

Life and career

Family and early life

Huber-Dyson was born Verena Esther Huber in Naples, Italy, on May 6, 1923. Her parents, Karl (Charles) Huber (1893-1946) and Berthy Ryffel (1899-1945), were Swiss nationals[2] who raised Verena and her sister Adelheid ("Heidi", 1925-1987) in Athens, greece, where the girls attended the German-speaking Deutsche Schule, or German School of Athens, until forced to return to Switzerland in 1940 by the war.

Charles Huber, who had managed the Middle Eastern operations of Bühler AG, a Swiss food-process engineering firm, began working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), monitoring the treatment of prisoners of war in internment camps. As the ICRC delegate to India and Ceylon, he was responsible for Italian prisoners held in British camps, but also visited German and Allied camps in Europe, and in 1945-46 served as an ICRC delegate to the United States, which he described to Verena as a place she "definitely ought to experience at length and in depth but just as definitely ought not to settle in."[3]

She studied mathematics, with minors in physics and philosophy, at the University of Zurich, where she obtained her Ph.D in mathematics there in 1947 with a thesis in finite group theory.[4][5][6] under the supervision of Andreas Speiser.

Children

Verena married Hans-Georg Haefeli, a fellow mathematician, in 1942,[7] and was divorced in 1948. Her first daughter, Katarina Haefeli (now Halm),[3] was born in 1945.[7][8]

She subsequently married Freeman Dyson in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on August 11, 1950.[5] They had two children together, Esther Dyson (born July 14, 1951, in Zurich) and George Dyson (born 1953, Ithaca, New York)[1][5] and divorced in 1958.[8][9]

Career

Huber-Dyson accepted a postdoctoral fellow appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1948,[10] where she worked on group theory and formal logic.[7][8] She also began teaching at Goucher College near Baltimore during this time.[2]

She moved to California with her daughter Katarina, began teaching at San Jose State University in 1959, and then joined Alfred Tarski's Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.[8][11]

Huber-Dyson taught at San Jose State University, the University of Zürich, University of Monash, as well as at UC Berkeley, Adelphi University, UCLA, and the University of Illinois, in mathematics and in philosophy departments. She accepted a position in the philosophy department of the University of Calgary in 1973, becoming emerita in 1988.[12]

Academic affiliations (non-tenure)

Academic affiliations (tenure)

Non-academic

Later life

Verena Huber-Dyson died on March 12, 2016 in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 92.[14][15]

Selected publications

Books

Articles

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Nicholas Dawidoff, "The Civil Heretic", New York Times, March 29, 2009.
  2. 1 2 Schewe, p.72.
  3. 1 2 "Obituary of Verena Huber-Dyson". molesfarewelltributes.com. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  4. ↑ Ein Dualismus als Klassifikationsprinzip in der abstrakten Gruppentheorie (dissertation).
  5. 1 2 3 John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, Freeman Dyson, The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St. Andrews Scotland (last visited March 14, 2014).
  6. ↑ Verena Huber-Dyson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. 1 2 3 Schewe, p.70.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Anita Burdman Feferman and Solomon Feferman, Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic, pp. 272–276.
  9. ↑ See generally Phillip F. Schewe, Maverick Genius: The Pioneering Odyssey of Freeman Dyson, Chapters 5–8.
  10. ↑ Directory, A Community of Scholars: Institute for Advanced Study, Institute for Advanced Study (last visited March 14, 2014).
  11. ↑ Verena Huber-Dyson, "Gödel in a Nutshell", Edge, May 13, 2006.
  12. ↑ Schewe, p.287.
  13. ↑ Huber-Dyson, Verena. Gödel's Theorems: A Workbook on Formalization. Teubner. ISBN 9783815420232.
  14. ↑ John Brockman (March 13, 2016). "Verena Huber-Dyson". Edge. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Obiturary of Verena Huber-Dyson". Retrieved April 28, 2016.

References

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