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Helene Braun (3 June 1914 -15 May 1986) was a German mathematician and one of the first female professors of mathematics in German higher education. Her education at Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Marburg brought her in contact with the renowned German mathematicians of her day in the midst of the sociopolitical strife that struck Germany in the 1930's. A woman in a field with few female figures, Braun nonetheless continued in academia her entire life. Beginning in 1952, she taught mathematics at the University of Hamburg for nearly thirty years until her retirement, followed by her death only five years later.

Early life and education
Childhood

Hel Braun was born in the city of Frankfurt on 3 June 1914 to gymnastics instructor Robert Gottlob Braun and housewife Emma Braun, b. Bayha. She grew up with four older stepsisters and one younger brother, with whom she shared In her school class, a number of her classmates shared her name, and it was then that she began going by Hel, a name she would keep for the rest of her life. She'd later describe herself as a headstrong and stubborn young girl, who preferred to study at home rather than at school.

Nevertheless, she succeeded in mathematics and physics, despite objections by her teachers over her lack of writing conventions. She was recommended for the Studienstiftung by one of her mathematics teachers, and mathematician Ernst Hellinger was appointed to oversee her work during the admissions process. The two became friends and were mutually affectionate, but in the end, Braun was denied entry and instead enrolled at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Education

Braun enrolled in Goethe University Frankfurt in 1933, pursuing mathematics and actuarial studies, unusual for a woman in those times. With only a modest family income, Braun took to earning "hard work certificates" each semester, received for additional examination papers, in order to pay the tuition fees. She quickly came into conflict, however, with the Deutsche Studentenschaft and the Nazi Party, even boycotting lectures in protest. She was issued a warning and left the university for the University of Marburg in 1935.

In her memoirs, Braun would describe her winter and summer semesters in Marburg from 1935 to 1936 as the highlights of her academic career. Her boarding fees and food were paid for by the student union, but she still remained in an outsider for her study of mathematics; her dorm-mates predominantly studied medicine. She dedicated most of her time towards mathematics and physics, where she formed a friendship with professors Kurt Reidemeister and Franz Rellich, working with their Ph.D. students and attending their lectures. Reidemeister would later confide that he wanted to keep Braun at Marburg as a doctoral student, but this would not come to pass as Braun was offered a position with Carl Ludwig Siegel.

While Braun was uncomfortable around Siegel, she understood his lectures and teaching in a way she didn't with Reidemeister. While political strife had driven her from Frankfurt, these same troubles reached Marburg when in 1936 when her opposition to the Nazi Party and her "political unreliability" were leaked, preventing her from receiving a scholarship. She took the offer, leaving Marburg for Frankfurt to pursue her dissertation. , which she published in the beginning of 1938.

Career
In 1938, Braun traveled with Siegel to the University of Göttingen, initially hired as his assistant, but by December 1940, she was habilitated as a professor of mathematics in analytic number theory at the age of twenty-seven. Seven years later, in 1947, she was appointed a professor extraordinaire at the university and received an invitation to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from September 1947 to September 1948. In 1951, she returned to teaching in what was now West Germany, guest lecturing at the University of Hamburg from 1951 to 1952 before being habilitated as a professor later on in 1952. She remained at the University of Hamburg for years, being appointed a professor extraordinaire and scientific adviser in 1965 before earning tenure three years later in 1968. She remained at the University of Hamburg until her retirement in 1981.