Eduard Helly

Eduard Helly (June 1, 1884, Vienna – 1943, Chicago) was a mathematician after whom Helly's theorem, Helly families, Helly's selection theorem, Helly metric, and the Helly–Bray theorem were named.

Life

Helly earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1907, with two advisors, Wilhelm Wirtinger and Franz Mertens. He then continued his studies for another year at the University of Göttingen; Richard Courant, also studying there at the same time, tells a story of Helly disrupting one of Courant's talks, which fortunately did not prevent David Hilbert from eventually hiring Courant as an assistant. After returning to Vienna, Helly worked as a tutor, Gymnasium teacher, and textbook editor until World War I, when he enlisted in the Austrian army. He was shot in 1915, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Russians. In one prison camp in Berezovka, Siberia, he organized a mathematical seminar in which Tibor Radó, then an engineer, began his interest in pure mathematics. While held in another camp at Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, also in Siberia, Helly wrote important contributions on functional analysis.