Otto Toeplitz was born on August 1, 1881 in what is now Wroclaw, Poland. His father and grandfather both taught mathematics at the gymnasium, so it was no surprise that Otto pursued studies in algebraic geometry at the University of Breslau, earning his doctorate in 1905.
In the years that followed, he published papers on Hilbert’s spectral theory, and developed the concept of “toepliz operators.” Professorial jobs were scarce and Toepliz’s search for an appointment finally yielded a teaching post at the University of Kiel in 1913, but it was not until 1928 that he was offered the chair at the University of Bonn.
While in this role, he developed a general theory of infinite dimensional spaces, criticizing Banach’s representation as too abstract. In 1935, the Nazis dismissed Toeplitz from his post because of his Jewish heritage, so Toeplitz poured the next four years into mathematics programs for gifted children, and then emigrated to Palestine where he began work on modernizing the Jerusalem University, However he died a year later, leaving this work to others.
Otto Teoplitz lamented the presentation of mathematics as dry and formal, and commented in his book, The Calculus: A Genetic Approach:
Regarding all these basic topics in infinitesimal calculus which we teach today as canonical requisites … the question is never raised, “Why so?” or “How does one arrive at them?” Yet all these matters must at one time have been goals of an urgent quest, answers to burning questions, at the time, namely, when they were created. If we were to go back to the origins of these ideas, they would lose that dead appearance of cut-and-dried facts and instead take on fresh and vibrant life again.
