Robert Frucht

[2] Frucht entered the University of Berlin in 1924 with an interest in differential geometry, but switched to group theory under the influence of his doctoral advisor, Issai Schur; he received his Ph.D. in 1931.

[3][4] Unable to find academic employment in Germany due to his Jewish descent, he became an actuary in Trieste, but left Italy in 1938 because of the racial laws that came into effect at that time.

[2][5] At the same time Robert Breusch, another German mathematician who had been working in Chile for three years but was leaving for the U.S., invited Frucht to fill his position at Federico Santa María Technical University in Valparaiso, Chile, where Frucht found an academic home beginning in 1939.

[1][2][6] At Santa María, Frucht became dean of the faculty of mathematics and physics from 1948 to 1968, and retired to become an emeritus professor in 1970.

[7] LCF notation, a method for describing cubic Hamiltonian graphs, was named for the initials of Joshua Lederberg, H. S. M. Coxeter, and Frucht, its key developers.