Karin Reich


Karin Anna Reich is a German historian of mathematics.

Career

From 1967 to 1973 Reich was a scientific assistant at the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Institute for the History of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, where in 1973 she and Helmuth Gericke graduated. In 1980 she completed her time in Munich, publishing The development of tensor calculus, in 1994 in a revised form as a book.
In 1980 she became Professor of the History of Natural Science and Engineering at the Stuttgart College of Librarianship. In 1980/81 and 1981/82 she had a teaching assignment for the History of Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1981 she represented the Department of History of Science at the University of Hamburg. In 1982, she became associate professor and in 1988 Professor for History of Mathematics at the University of Stuttgart. From 1994 until her retirement she was a professor at the Institute for the History of Natural Science, Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Hamburg, where she succeeded Christoph J. Scriba as director.

Recognition

Reich is a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Selected publications

Reich's publications include biographies of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Michael Stifel and François Viète. With Gericke, Reich produced an annotated translation of Viète's Analyticam In artem Isagoge from 1591. She wrote a history of vector-and tensor and differential geometry. With Kurt Vogel, Gericke and Reich reissued John Tropfke's history of elementary mathematics.
Reich's books include: