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Rose Peltesohn

Rose Peltesohn was a German-born Israeli mathematician known for solving Heffter's difference problems in combinatorics in 1939.

1913 to 1998Solving Heffter's difference problemsCyclic Steiner triple systemsWork in combinatorics

Born: 16 May 1913, Berlin
Died: 21 March 1998, Kfar Saba
Occupation: mathematician
Education: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Rose Peltesohn was born in 1913 in Berlin

Rose Peltesohn was born in Berlin on 16 May 1913. Her father, Ludwig Peltesohn, was a physician, and her mother was Cilly Caro.

She finished high school in 1931 and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Berlin. In 1936 she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics under Issai Schur, with a thesis on the tournament problem for three person games.

As a Jew, she left Germany and reached the Land of Israel through Italy in 1938. From 1939 to 1942 she worked in a bank, and later as a lawyer's secretary and translator in Tel Aviv.

In 1939 she solved the difference problems posed by Lothar Heffter in 1896. She showed that the required partition exists in every case except v = 9, and her solution also gives a way to build cyclic Steiner triple systems.

She married her cousin Gerhard Peltesohn, a lawyer, and they had two daughters, Ruth and Judith. She died on 21 March 1998 in Kfar Saba.