Kurt Otto Friedrichs

Kurt Otto Friedrichs was a German American mathematician who worked on many aspects of partial differential equations and was a co-founder of the Courant Institute. He was born in Kiel on 28 September 1901 and died at New Rochelle, New York, on 31 December 1982. In later life he disliked the name Kurt because it sounded sharp, and he was called Frieder. His father Karl was a lawyer and an expert on Civil Service law, his mother was Elisabeth Entel from Silesia, and he was the middle of three children. The family moved from Kiel when he was very young and settled in Dusseldorf, where his father became friendly with the brother of Felix Klein.