mathematics

Leo Perutz

Leo Perutz is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Leo Perutz rather than just read about it. In short: Leopold Perutz (2 November 1882 – 25 August 1957) was an Austrian novelist and mathematician. Born in Prague, he lived in Vienna until the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine.

Key takeaways

Leo Perutz belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Leo Perutz to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Leo Perutz from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Leopold Perutz (2 November 1882 – 25 August 1957) was an Austrian novelist and mathematician. Born in Prague, he lived in Vienna until the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine. According to the biographical note on the Arcade Publishing editions of the English translations of his novels, Leo was a mathematician who formulated an algebraic equation which is named after him; he worked as a statistician for an insurance company. He was related to the biologist Max Perutz. During the 1950s he returned occasionally to Austria, spending the summer and autumn months in the market town of St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut in the Salzkammergut resort region and in Vienna. He died in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1957. He wrote his first novel, The Third Bullet, in 1915 while recovering from a wound sustained in the First World War. In all Perutz wrote eleven novels, which gained the admiration of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Ian Fleming, Karl Edward Wagner and Graham Greene. Wagner cited Perutz's novel The Master of the Day of Judgment as one of the thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels.

Overview Perutz was born in Prague to a largely non-religious family of Jewish ancestry. They moved to Vienna, where he attended various schools and colleges before studying probability theory, statistics, actuarial science, and economics. Perutz's novels are short and are usually historical novels combining fast-paced adventure with a metaphysical twist. They are influenced by the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Arthur Schnitzler and Victor Hugo (whose work Perutz translated into German). Austrian fellow novelist Friedrich Torberg once characterized Perutz's literary style as the possible result of a little infidelity of Franz Kafka and Agatha Christie. The Marquis of Bolibar (1920) features the Wandering Jew appearing during Napoleon's campaign in Spain. The Master of the Day of Judgement (1921) is a decidedly different mystery story about the circumstances surrounding an actor's death in the early twentieth century, and Little Apple (1928) concerns a First World War soldier's obsessive quest for revenge. By Night Under the Stone Bridge (1952) is an episodic work whose separate stories are bound together by the illicit love shared, in their dreams, by a Jewish woman and the Emperor Rudolf II. In the posthumously-published Leonardo's Judas (1959), da Vinci's quest for an appropriate face to give the betrayer in his Last Supper is interwoven with the squabble between a usurer and the merchant to whom he owes money. The title of his 1933 novel Saint Peter's Snow (published in English in 1935 as The Virgin's Brand), which is set in what was then the present day, refers to a drug which induces religious fervour; the Nazis, understandably, did not care for it. Critic Alan Piper considered it "a psychological detective story", although it has varyingly been categorised as science fiction or fantasy. Piper believed that the novel was decades ahead of its time due to the description of a hallucinogenic drug derived from an ergot fungus 10 years before the discovery of LSD. He also thought it astonishing that it discussed the experimental use of this hallucinogen on an isolated village 20 years before the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, and proposed that ergot was the psychoactive ingredient used in the ancient mystery cults 40 years before this was put forward as a serious proposal. In his discussion of German language fantastic literature, critic Franz Rottensteiner describes Perutz as "undoubtedly the finest fantasy author of his time". Literary scholar Alan Piper described Perutz's work as typically containing "an element of the fantastic, with dramatic plots featuring confusing and conflicting interpretations of events".

Novels by Perutz in English translation (Dates of publication are for the original German-language editions)

From Nine to Nine (1918) The Marquis of Bolibar (1920) The Master of the Day of Judgment (1921) Turlupin (1924) Little Apple (1928) Saint Peter's Snow (1933) The Swedish Cavalier (1936) By Night under the Stone Bridge (1953) Leonardo's Judas (1959)

Filmography The Adventure of Doctor Kircheisen, directed by Rudolf Biebrach (1921, based on the novel Das Mangobaumwunder) Die Geburt des Antichrist, directed by Friedrich Feher (1922, based on the novel Die Geburt des Antichrist) The Marquis of Bolibar, directed by Friedrich Porges (1922, based on the novel Der Marques de Bolibar) Bolibar, directed by Walter Summers (UK, 1928, based on the novel Der Marques de Bolibar) The Cossack and the Nightingale, directed by Phil Jutzi (1935, based on the novel Der Kosak und die Nachtigall) Historia de una noche, directed by Luis Saslavsky (Argentina, 1941, based on the play Morgen ist Feiertag) Historia de una noche, directed by Luis Saslavsky (Spain, 1963, based on the play Morgen ist Feiertag) The Master of the Day of Judgment, directed by Michael Kehlmann (1990, TV film, based on the novel The Master of the Day of Judgment) Saint Peter's Snow, directed by Peter Patzak (1991, TV film, based on the novel Saint Peter's Snow)

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Further reading Hans Harald Müller: Leo Perutz, München, Verlag C. H. Beck, 1992 Dietrich Neuhaus: Erinnerung und Schrecken. Die Einheit von Geschichte, Phantastik und Mathematik im Werk Leo Perutz, Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1984 Brigitte Forster, Hans Harald Müller (Hrsg.): Leo Perutz. Unruhige Träume - Abgründige Konstruktionen. Dimensionen des Werks, Stationen der Wirkung, Wien, Sonderzahl, 2002 ISBN 3-85449-197-2. Ulrike Siebauer: Leo Perutz - »Ich kenne alles. Alles, nur nicht mich«, Gerlingen, Bleicher Verlag, 2000 ISBN 3-88350-666-4

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Leo Perutz

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Leo Perutz claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Leo Perutz before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Leo Perutz ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Leo Perutz

In research: Leo Perutz appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Leo Perutz in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Leo Perutz is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1882 births, 1957 deaths, 20th-century Austrian male writers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Leo Perutz outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Leo Perutz in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Leo Perutz means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Leo Perutz out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Leo Perutz in simple terms?

Leopold Perutz (2 November 1882 – 25 August 1957) was an Austrian novelist and mathematician. Born in Prague, he lived in Vienna until the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine.

Why does Leo Perutz matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Leo Perutz?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Leo Perutz.