Scientific biography of the mathematician, engineer, and philosopher Richard von Mises (1883-1953)

The proposed project aims at writing the first scientific biography of the influential Austrian-German-Jewish-American mathematician, engineer, positivist philosopher and authority on the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Richard von Mises. Due to the role model of the German system and due to von Mises' personal relations to Scandinavian engineers and mathematicians, the topic is also bearing on the history of applied mathematics in Scandinavia. The proposed project will prepare an enlargem ent of the topic in this direction by empirical studies in Norwegian archives. As to the intellectual and cognitive history of applied mathematics, engineering and positivistic philosophy, the project intends to provide case studies for the genesis of aerodynamics (connected to von Mises' research on airfoil theory and on the founda tions of hydrodynamics), for modern stochastics (especially foundational controversies between von Mises and Kolmogorov) and the relation of positivistic philosophy and mathematics. The realization of this project requires extensive studies into unpublish ed historiographical sources, among them the Mises Papers at Harvard University (Boston) and scattered sources in Berlin, Dresden, Konstanz, Amsterdam, Istanbul, and, to a lesser extent, Vienna and Brno. In addition, for the Scandinavian dimension trips to Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen and Stockholm are necessary.