Alfred Pringsheim

Alfred Pringsheim (2 September 1850 – 25 June 1941) was a German mathematician and patron of the arts. He was born in Ohlau, Prussian Silesia (now Oława, Poland) and died in Zürich, Switzerland. Family and academic career Pringsheim came from an extremely wealthy Silesian merchant family with Jewish roots. He was the first-born child and only son of the Upper Silesian railway entrepreneur and coal mine owner Rudolf Pringsheim (1821–1901) and his wife Paula, née Deutschmann (1827–1909). He had a younger sister, Martha. Pringsheim attended the Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau, where he excelled in music and mathematics. Starting in 1868 he studied mathematics and physics in Berlin and at the Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg. In 1872 he was awarded a doctorate in mathematics, studying under Leo Königsberger. In 1875, he moved from Berlin, where his parents lived, to Munich to earn his habilitation. Two years later he became a lecturer at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.