Ludwig was one of three children of Max Berwald, an East Prussian owner of a famous bookstore, and Friedericke Fischel. They were "
Jewish with Max coming from
East Prussia and his wife being a native of
Prague." In 1900, the family moved to Munich, where Ludwig matriculated at the
University of Munich (LMU Munich) in 1902. There he studied mathematics under
Aurel Voss, alongside notable mathematicians
Hugo Dingler and
Fritz Noether, and received his PhD in 1908 for his thesis entitled
Über die Krümmungseigenschaften der Brennflächen eines geradlinigen Strahlsystems und der in ihm enthaltenen Regelflächen (
On the properties of curvature on the internal surfaces of rectilinear systems, and surfaces contained therein). Due to sanatorium treatment for pulmonary illness, he was unable to continue his work in Munich. Through friends, he eventually became a lecturer at the German University (now
Charles University) back in Prague, achieving full professorship in 1924. There, he developed friendships and successful collaborations with fellow mathematicians
Georg Pick,
Paul Funk, and
Élie Cartan, publishing some 54 articles and the Berwald–Moór metric function. For extending the concept of Riemann curvature to Finsler spaces, Berwald has been credited as the founder of differential geometry of Finsler spaces. On 22 October 1941, the day after submitting his last article, ==Selected works==