Wolfgang Jurkat earned his Ph.D. at Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen at age 21 in 1950, writing under the direction of George Lorentz and Konrad Knopp, and was there from 1950-1953 as assistant and then dozent. He was a research fellow and then associate professor at University of Cincinnati from 1953 to 1955, a research fellow at Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 1955-1956, and an associate professor at Ohio State University 1956-1957. He joined SU as an associate professor in 1957, and became a professor in 1958. He was a research fellow again at Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 1959-1961, was a research professor at Aachen-Jülich 1962-1964, and was a visiting professor at the Universities of Giessen/Marburg 1959-1960, Göttingen 1960, Berlin 1960-1961, Aachen 1961, Köln 1965, 1966, 1966-1967, Bonn 1965-1967, 1967-1968, 1969, Ulm summers of 1970-1975, and Illinois-Urbana in spring 1973. In 1976 he became John Raymond French Professor of Mathematics at SU, and in 1977 he became a professor at Ulm, alternating with SU. He was distinguished lecturer in September 1981 and visiting professor in spring 1986 at Southern California, and visiting professor in October 1987 at Strasbourg.

He directed the following Ph.Ds at SU: Donald Lutz (1965), Harold Benzinger (1967), Gary Sampson (1970), Leonora Benzinger (1972), Melvin Friske (1977), John Van Horne (1979); and at Universität Ulm: W. Kratz (1973), Hans-Joachim Zwiesler (1983), Reiner Knizia (1986), Dirk Nonnenmacher (1990), and Andreas Mehl (1991). He listed his research interests as analysis and number theory, specifically meromorphic differential equations, harmonic analysis, summability, integration theory and approximation theory. He received numerous research grants from NSF. His March 1989 vita shows 107 research papers, many with collaborators: 27 with Peyerimhoff, others written jointly with former PhD. students (Lutz 16, Sampson 9, Van Horne 4, Kratz 4, Zwiesler 6) and a number written with SU faculty colleagues. He clearly was an inspiration to be around. He wrote a research book Meromorphe Differentialgleichungen, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes 637 (1978) 194 pp.; a graduate text Elementare Euklidische Geometrie, ein Vectorielle Aufbau (about 200 pp.) and an undergraduate text Elementary Euclidean Geometry (based on translations, about 170 pp.). He was a member of the AMS and the German Mathematical Society.

He initiated a new program in applied mathematics at Ulm, called Wirtschaftsmathematik, in which about 650 graduate students are enrolled; it doubled the faculty. He also initiated an exchange program which enables 20 or 30 graduate students from Ulm per year to study at participating US universities, including SU. Jurkat was away on leave 1978 to 1981, and at his request was granted a tenured appointment at SU for one semester per year. He resigned finally in 1990.

Source: His March 1989 cv. Phil Church 6/14/02

Wolfgang Jurkat died on January 7 of 2017 in Ulm.