Hans Schneider (mathematician)

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Hans Schneider (* 24. January 1927 in Vienna , Austria ; † 28. October 2014 in Madison , Wisconsin ) was a born in Austria British - American mathematician and James Joseph Sylvester -Emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison , where he taught from 1959 to 1993.

life and career

Schneider was born in 1927 as the only child of Austrian Jews in the capital Vienna, where he also spent part of his childhood before he and his parents fled to nearby Czechoslovakia a few months before the start of the Second World War . Via Poland , where the Schneiders lived in a town that was annexed by Germany after the Munich Agreement of late September 1938, the family finally came to the Netherlands , where Hans Schneider attended the Quaker School Eerde near Ommen . In August 1939, just three weeks before the outbreak of World War II, he was reunited in Scotland with his parents, who had meanwhile emigrated north alone. He came to Scotland via the so-called Kindertransport . Although his parents Hugo (in * 1897 Karviná , † 1967 in Edinburgh) (born sapphire) and Isabella Schneider, also known as Bella, (* 1897 in Vienna, † 1967 in Edinburgh) officially had no religious affiliation, they were due to the Nuremberg Laws as Jews viewed. In Scotland he attended George Watson's Boys' College and the University of Edinburgh , which he graduated with an MA after four years in 1948 and received First Class Honors . His first job after completing his studies was as an astronomer (especially as a scientific officer ), which he abandoned completely after only two years after he was fired when he destroyed an expensive new astronomical instrument when it was first used.

He then returned to the University of Edinburgh and began studying mathematics, which he received in 1952 with a Ph.D. graduated; his dissertation he wrote in 18 months on matrices with non-negative elements ( Engl. matrices with non negative element ). During this time he studied under AC Aitken and, after completing his doctorate, taught at Queen's University Belfast until 1959 , from 1952 to 1954 as an assistant lecturer under Samuel Verblunsky and from 1954 to 1959 as a lecturer. In the same year Schneider finally went to the USA with his family, where he settled in Madison , Wisconsin . There he was accepted as a professor at UW Madison and taught there up to and including 1993 before he announced his resignation. He held the position of assistant professor from 1959 to 1961 and was finally employed as an associate professor from 1961 to 1965 . From 1965 onwards he worked as a professor of mathematics at UW Madison before he rose to the position of James Joseph Sylvester Professor in 1988 and held this title until 1993. During his early days as a professor of mathematics, he was elected chairman of the mathematics department in 1967 at the age of 39. Initially confident of asserting himself in this position at the second largest university in Wisconsin, he soon felt a certain incompetence of his own in dealing with the dissolute student movements on the North American campus. In 1969 he therefore decided not to run again for election. Since his retirement in 1993 he has held the title of James Joseph Sylvester Emeritus Professor ; afterwards Schneider attached great importance to the fact that he had only retired as a teacher, not as a mathematician.

As a guest lecturer or visiting professor , he worked during his playing career, among others, from 1956 to 1957 at the Washington State University , 1964-1965 at UCSB , from 1969 to 1970 at the University of Toronto , in the summer of 1970 at the University of Tübingen , in the summer of 1972 and from January to December 1974 at the Technical University of Munich , from January to August 1977 at the Center de Recherches Mathématiques at the Université de Montréal , from 1980 to 1981 at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg , from September 1985 to January 1986 at the Technion in Haifa , from May to June 1991 at the University of Bielefeld , from September to November of the same year at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota and after his retirement from July to September 1996 at the TU Chemnitz and again of the University of Bielefeld. Furthermore, from July to August 1980 he was a research visitor at UNICAMP in Campinas , Brazil . Even after that, Schneider worked as a speaker at various meetings and events well into old age.

In addition, Schneider was a member of the Gatlinburg Organizing Committee from 1977 to 1990 and was also a member of the Householder Prize Committee from 1977 to 1984 . He was also a member of the organizing committee of the SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra in 1982 and was the first chairman of the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra from that year to 1984 . In 1985 he was co-chair of the SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra in Raleigh , North Carolina . He held the same position three years later at the Madison conference. In August of the following year he was a member of the Organizing Committee of the Utah Linear Algebra Meeting , organized by the International Linear Algebra Society ( ILAS for short ), of which he was first president from 1987 to 1996. Previously, this organization occurred from 1987 to 1990 under the name International Matrix Group , from 1990 the name of the successor was finally International Linear Algebra Society . From 1968 he was the founder and author of Linear Algebra and Its Applications ; from 1972 to 2012 he was editor-in-chief in this position. When he left, the journal already had four editors-in-chief and received around 1,200 submissions annually, which resulted in around 5,000 pages being printed. Furthermore, from 1998 he appeared as a consulting author of the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra . He was also the author of Linear and Multilinear Algebra from 1972 to 1992 and the SIAM Journal Algebraic and Discrete Methods from 1979 to 1987 . He also appeared as a consulting author for the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra . Together with Bertram Huppert , he was editor of Helmut Wielandt's collected works. Throughout his career, he published around 160 research papers that covered many aspects of theoretical linear algebra, but mostly specialized in the theory of nonnegative matrices.

Having already had terminal esophageal cancer, he wrote his final words in May 2014, published before his death, with only the date of death released. In June of that year he wrote down the personal history of his family from March 1938 to August 1940, although he had never spoken to his family about this large part of his childhood until his late 60s. On October 28, 2014, Hans Schneider finally succumbed to cancer at the age of 87 with his family in Madison, Wisconsin. He left behind his wife Miriam (* 1925), a former professional violinist who came from a family of musicians and with whom he had been married since 1948; her brother is the violinist and author Michael Wieck . He also left the children Barbara Anne (* 1948; with Daryl), Peter John (* 1950; with Hope), Michael Hugo (* 1952; with Laurie) and the six grandchildren David and Daniel Caswell, Hannah and Rebecca Schneider, as well Carson Rose and Kurt Schneider.

He founded the ILAS Hans Schneider Prize for linear algebra, named after him .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Schneider at genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu (English), accessed on November 1, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American mathematician and university professor of Austrian origin
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 2014
Place of death Madison , Wisconsin, United States