Oskar Bolza - Life

Life

His parents were Luise Koenig and Moritz Bolza. His mother was one of the daughters of Friedrich Koenig, the German inventor best known for his high-speed printing press. In the spring of 1888 he landed in Hoboken, NJ, searching for a job in the USA: he succeeded in finding a position in 1889 at John Hopkins University and then at the then newly founded Clark University. In 1892 Bolza joined the University of Chicago and worked there up to 1910 when, after becoming unhappy in the United States as a consequence of the death of his friend Heinrich Maschke in 1908, he and his wife returned to Freiburg in Germany. The events of World War I greatly affected Bolza and, after 1914, he stopped his research in mathematics. He became interested in religious psychology, languages (particularly Sanskrit), and Indian religions. He published the book Glaubenlose Religion (religion without belief) in 1930 under the pseudonym F. H. Marneck. However, later in his life he returned to do research in mathematics, lecturing at University of Freiburg from 1929 up to his retirement in 1933.