Rudolf Fueter

Rudolf Fueter, around 1920

Karl Rudolf Fueter (pronounced [fuətər] ; born June 30, 1880 in Basel ; † August 9, 1950 in Brunnen ) was a Swiss mathematician.

life and work

Fueter studied mathematics in Basel from 1898 and at the University of Göttingen from 1899 , where he received his doctorate in 1903 under David Hilbert ("Investigations in an imaginary square body"). He then continued to study in Vienna , Paris and London . In 1905 he completed his habilitation at the University of Marburg . In 1907 he became a professor at the Bergakademie Clausthal and in 1908 in Basel . In 1913 he went to the Technical University of Karlsruhe and in 1916 to the University of Zurich . From 1920 to 1922 he was rector there.

Fueter dealt with algebraic number theory and function theory of quaternions . The Fueter-Pólya phrase is associated with his name.

In 1910 he was one of the founders of the Swiss Mathematical Society and its first president. During the Second World War, he was the (artillery) colonel head of the press department in the Swiss Army High Command, vigorously opposing the National Socialists and defending freedom of the press. With Andreas Speiser he played a key role in the publication of Leonhard Euler's works and from 1927 headed the Euler Commission . He was editor of the Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici. In 1936 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo (The Theory of the Regular Functions of a Quaternion Variable) and in 1932 at the one in Zurich (Ideal Theory and Function Theory). In 1932 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1949 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

He had been married since 1908 and had one daughter.

Fonts (selection)

• Synthetic number theory . 3rd edition DeGruyter, Berlin 1930 (EA 1917).
• Lectures on the singular modules and the complex multiplication of the elliptic functions . Teubner, Leipzig 1924/27

1. 142 p. 1924.
2. Pp. 144-358. 1927.

• The mathematical tool of the chemist, biologist, statistician and sociologist. Lecture on the higher mathematical terms in connection with their applications (publication of the Swiss mathematical society ; Vol. 3). 3rd edition Orell Füssli, Zurich 1947 (EA 1926).
• The class field of the quadratic fields and the complex multiplication . Dieterich, Göttingen 1903 (also dissertation, University of Göttingen 1903).
• The theory of the number lines . Reimer, Berlin 1905 (also habilitation thesis, University of Marburg 1905).

literature

• Johann Jakob Burckhardt :  Fueter, Karl Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 707 ( digitized version ).
• Siegfried Gottwald , Hans-Joachim Ilgauds , Karl-Heinz Schlote (ed.): Lexicon of important mathematicians . Verlag Deutsch, Thun 1990, ISBN 3-8171-1164-9 .
• Erwin Neuenschwander: Fueter, Karl Rudolf. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Fueter in the catalog of the German National Library
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Rudolf Fueter. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Fueter, Karl Rudolf. Hessian biography. (As of January 12, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

proof

1. ↑ Hans Bickel, Christoph Landolt: Duden. Swiss high German. Dictionary of the standard language in German-speaking Switzerland. Edited by the Swiss Association for the German Language. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Zurich 2012, p. 88.
2. ^ Rudolf Fueter obituary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).