Gerhard Thomsen
German mathematician (1899-1934)

Gerhard Thomsen (23 June 1899 – 4 January 1934) was a German mathematician, probably best known for his work in various branches of geometry.
Life
Thomsen was born on 23 June 1899 in Hamburg. His father, Georg Thomsen, was a physician. Thomsen grew up in Hamburg and attended the Johanneum (gymnasium/highschool) from 1908 to 1917. After completing school he served in the army during the last year of World War I. In 1919 he became of the first students at the newly founded University of Hamburg majoring in mathematics and natural science. Aside from a temporary interlude Thomsen studied in Hamburg until 1923. He received a certification to teach at highschools the fall of 1922 and finally his PhD in the summer of the following year. After he worked shortly as an assistant at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology before returning to Hamburg in a similar capacity in the spring of 1925. While working on his habilitation thesis Thomsen spend one year in Rome on Rockefeller grant to study with Tullio Levi-Civita. He received his habilitation in Hamburg in 1928 and started a position as a tenured professor at the University of Rostock in the fall of 1929.
“Gerhard Thomsen” enters the record as german mathematician (1899-1934). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gerhard, Thomsen and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1464822. VIAF identifies the subject as 371323. The Library of Congress control number is n84802563. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1934, 1908 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gerhard Thomsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.