Willi Rinow

Willi Ludwig August Rinow (28 February 1907 in Berlin to 29 March 1979 in Greifswald) was a German mathematician who specialized in differential geometry and topology. He was the son of a schoolteacher and in 1926 began studying mathematics and physics at the Humboldt University of Berlin under professors including Max Planck, Ludwig Bieberbach and Heinz Hopf. He received his doctorate there in 1931 with a thesis on the connections between differential geometry in the large and in the small. In 1933 he worked at the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik in Berlin, in 1937 he joined the Nazi Party and became a professor in Berlin, and he edited the journal Deutsche Mathematik from 1937 to 1940. From 1946 to 1949 he worked as a mathematician at the Oberspreewerk, a producer of radio and telecommunications technology.