Herbert Seifert
Karl Johannes Herbert Seifert (born May 27, 1907 in Bernstadt ad Eigen ; † October 1, 1996 in Heidelberg ) was a German mathematician who mainly dealt with topology .
life and work
He grew up in Bautzen as the son of a judicial officer and studied mathematics and physics at the TH Dresden from 1926 , where he a. a. heard from William Threlfall , interrupted by a study visit in the winter semester of 1928/1929 in Göttingen , where he met the topologists Heinz Hopf and Pawel Alexandrow . In 1929 he was back in Dresden, where the close collaboration with Threlfall, with whom he also became friends, continued. In 1930 he graduated (state examination for teachers) and obtained his doctorate at the same time with a thesis on three-dimensional closed manifolds (which contains the theorem of Seifert and van Kampen ). rer. tech.
He then went on a scholarship to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden at the University of Leipzig , where he received a doctorate in 1932 with a work on the three-dimensional manifolds later known as Seifert's fiber spaces, which was largely completed before his stay in Leipzig. phil. PhD (this is also where the word fiber space is introduced for the first time, which is now a central term in topology with a slightly different use). During this time he kept in close contact with Threlfall, with whom he brought out the textbook of topology in 1934 (derived from lectures by Threlfall), which was translated into several languages. In the same year he became (by order of the Reich Ministry of Education) associate professor in Dresden and in the following year in Heidelberg (after Heinrich Liebmann had to give up the chair due to the Nazi Nuremberg race laws), from 1937 full professor.
In 1936 he attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo , where he contracted polio , and in 1938 published Threlfall's calculus of variations on a large scale ( Morse theory ) (with a motto in Latin that is directed against political conditions, it is hard today to write mathematics books that unite them Dispute with the editor of the series Wilhelm Blaschke ). During the war years he worked at the Institute for Gas Dynamics of the Air Force in Braunschweig , from which some papers on differential equation problems arose. Seifert also found accommodation for his friend and teacher Threlfall there during the war, and after the end of the war, which both of them experienced at the Mathematical Research Institute in Oberwolfach , which Wilhelm Süss (Freiburg) had just founded , tried to bring him to Heidelberg (but he died before that). From 1946 he returned to Heidelberg University (1948/9 at the invitation of Marston Morse in Princeton ), where he rebuilt the mathematical institute and stayed until his retirement in 1975.
In his habilitation from 1934, he defined Seifert surfaces for the calculation of node invariants.
He was a member of the Heidelberg and Göttingen Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he became an honorary member of the German Mathematicians Association .
Namesake
- Seifert fiber
- Seifert area
- Seifert matrix
- Seifert's conjecture , according to which continuous, non-singular vector fields on the 3-sphere have a closed solution curve. Seifert formulated this as a question, not a guess. The conjecture was refuted in 1974 by Paul A. Schweitzer ( -curves), with further improvements by Jenny Harrison and a smooth counterexample by Krystyna Kuperberg in 1993.
Fonts
- Construction of three-dimensional closed spaces. Dissertation. In: Reports of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. 1931.
- Topology of three-dimensional fibered spaces. Dissertation. In: Acta Mathematica . 1933.
- Link invariants. Habilitation thesis 1934. In: Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. 1933.
- with William Threlfall: Textbook of Topology. Teubner 1934 ( scan of the English translation , PDF; 7.4 MB).
- with William Threlfall: Calculus of Variations in the Large. Theory of Marston Morse . [Hamburger Mathematische Einzelschriften, 24th issue]. Leipzig, Teubner, 1938.
literature
- Dieter Doll : Seifert. In: Ioan Mackenzie James (Ed.): History of Topology. Elsevier, Amsterdam / New York 1999, ISBN 0-444-82375-1 .
- Dieter Doll: Obituary in the yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences 1997 ( digital edition . University of Heidelberg, 2001)
Web links
- Literature by and about Herbert Seifert in the catalog of the German National Library
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Herbert Seifert. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Gabriele Dörflinger: Herbert Seifert (with link to obituary from doll). A collection of material from Historia Mathematica Heidelbergensis .
- Seifert, Threlfall Topological investigations of the discontinuity areas of finite groups of motion in three-dimensional spherical space 1 , Math. Annalen 1931 and Part 2, Math. Annalen 1933 [1]
- Seifert on the gender of knots , Math. Annalen 1935
- Seifert The hypergeometric differential equations of gas dynamics , Math. Annalen 1947/9
Individual evidence
- ^ Gabriele Dörflinger: Mathematics in the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . 2014, pp. 71–76
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Seifert, Herbert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Seifert, Karl Johannes Herbert (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German mathematician and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 27, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bernstadt ad Eigen |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 1, 1996 |
| Place of death | Heidelberg |