Bernhard Neumann (mathematician)

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Bernhard Neumann, Erlangen 1970

Bernhard Hermann Neumann (born October 15, 1909 in Berlin ; † October 21, 2002 in Canberra ) was a German- British - Australian mathematician who dealt with group theory (especially infinite groups).

Live and act

Neumann was the son of an AEG engineer Richard Neumann and grew up in Berlin. From 1928 he studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and at the University of Berlin, where Erhard Schmidt , Robert Remak , Issai Schur , Alfred Brauer and Heinz Hopf were among his teachers. In 1932 he received his doctorate at Schur's request (The automorphism groups of free groups) . After the National Socialists came to power , he went to Amsterdam and then to Cambridge , where he received his doctorate from Philip Hall in 1935 (Identical relations in groups) . He was then an unpaid assistant at Cambridge and then from 1937 Assistant Lecturer at Cardiff University . In 1939 he went briefly to Germany to bring his (protesting!) Jewish parents to England. During the Second World War he was briefly interned and then in the British Army , most recently in Berlin for the military reconnaissance. In 1946 he became a lecturer in Hull and from 1948 in Manchester , where he finally became a reader. In 1961 he became professor and dean of the mathematics department of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra , where he also lived after his retirement in 1974.

In his dissertation at Cambridge he introduced group varieties and examined a.o. a. whether these have a finite basis (the general case was negative by Olschansky 1969). With his wife Hanna Neumann and Graham Higman , he proved the HNN embedding theorem in 1949: Every countable group can be embedded in a group created by two generators.

Neumann was also interested in the history of mathematics and published essays a. a. on Ada Lovelace and her relationship with Charles Babbage and Augustus De Morgan . He played an important role in building university mathematics and teacher training in Australia. In 1994 he received the Companionship of the Order of Australia for this.

Neumann was Vice President of the London Mathematical Society from 1957 to 1959, Vice President of the Australian Mathematical Society and its President from 1966 to 1968. In 1949 he was awarded the Amsterdam Scientific Society Prize. He won the Cambridge University's Adams Prize in 1952 (for An Essay on free products of groups with amalgamations ), was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1959 and a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences (1963). For these he published six volumes Mathematics at work in 1980/1981 . He also played the cello with a passion .

In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Properties of countable character ).

In 1938 he married the mathematician Hanna Neumann (1914–1971, born von Caemmerer), whom he knew from his studies in Berlin. With her he had three sons and two daughters. After the death of his first wife, he married Dorothea Frieda Auguste Zeim in 1973. Two sons from his first marriage, Peter and Walter Neumann , also became mathematicians.

Fonts

  • Higman, Graham; Neumann, BH; Neumann, Hanna: Embedding theorems for groups. J. London Math. Soc. 24: 247-254 (1949).
  • Lectures on topics in the theory of infinite groups. 1960
  • Selected Works of Bernard and HM Neumann. 6 volumes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He also discovered a mathematical theorem about triangles, known as " Napoleon's Theorem ". Bernard Neumann gave lectures on this.
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neumann, Bernhard Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 2002
Place of death Canberra