Springer earned his bachelor's degree in 1945 from
Case Western Reserve University (then named "Case Institute of Technology") and his master's degree in 1946 from
Brown University. He earned his PhD in 1949 from
Harvard University with thesis
The Coefficient Problem for Univalent Mappings of the Exterior of the Unit Circle under
Lars Ahlfors. From 1949 to 1951 Springer was a
C.L.E. Moore Instructor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1951 to 1954 he was an assistant professor at
Northwestern University. In the academic year 1954/1955 as a Fulbright Lecturer and visiting professor at the
University of Münster he worked with
Heinrich Behnke. In the autumn of 1955 Springer became an associate professor and subsequently a professor at the
University of Kansas. In the academic year 1961/1962 he was a Fulbright Lecturer and visiting professor at the
University of Würzburg. From 1964 he was a professor of mathematics and from 1987 also a professor of computer science at
Indiana University Bloomington. In the academic year 1971/1972 he was a visiting professor at
Imperial College in London. Springer began his career working in function theory (of one and several complex variables) and wrote a textbook on
Riemann surfaces. In the 1980s he turned more toward computer science, working on programming languages. ==Personal life and death==