Emil Hilb

Who was Emil Hilb?

Emil Hilb was a German-Jewish mathematician who worked in the fields of special functions, differential equations, and difference equations. He was one of the authors of the Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, contributing on the topics of trigonometric series and differential equations. He wrote a book on Lamé functions.

Hilb obtained his Ph.D. in 1903 under the supervision of Ferdinand von Lindemann. He worked as a high school mathematics teacher in Augsburg until 1906, when Max Noether hired him as an assistant; in 1908 he found a position as a lecturer at the University of Erlangen. He won a position as a professor at the University of Würzburg in 1909, in preference over Ernst Zermelo. His students at Würzberg included Richard Bär, who later became a distinguished experimental physicist, Otto Haupt, and Axel Schur.