Otto Grün (mathematician)

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Otto Grün (born June 26, 1888 in Berlin ; † October 1974 there ) was a German mathematician who dealt with number theory and group theory. He was self-taught and did not publish his first work until he was 46, but made important contributions to the theory of finite groups .

Otto Grün (right) 1957 with Bertram Huppert (left), Helmut Wielandt (hidden)

biography

Grün attended the Friedrich-Werdersche-Gymnasium in Berlin (Abitur 1908) and then went on to become a banker. Later he worked as a businessman. He dealt with mathematics as an amateur and was self-taught, but published (from 1934 to 1964) 26 scientific papers. From 1932 he was in correspondence with Helmut Hasse . In the very first letter he tried to prove Vandiver's conjecture in the theory of the circular division bodies (in the context of the Fermat conjecture ). Hasse found a mistake (it is still unproven to this day) but encouraged Grün to investigate further. This led to his first publication in the Crelles Journal in 1934 on the second case of Fermat's conjecture, after Hasse had also called on the American mathematician Harry Vandiver , who was an expert on these questions (Grün was not familiar with his work). Green came to the theory of finite groups through questions of class field theory, and in 1935 he proved two classical theorems named after him. In 1935, Grün took part in a colloquium on group theory in Göttingen near Hasse and also in the 1939 group theory conference of the Göttingen mathematicians with Philip Hall , where he presented results on the restricted Burnside problem . He dealt with the Burnside problem in the following decade, but only achieved partial results. At this time, Grün had completely turned to group theory and was in contact with Hans Zassenhaus , who presented Grün's theorems in his group theory textbook, as well as with Helmut Wielandt and Wilhelm Magnus . In 1938 he became chief mathematician at the Geophysical Institute in Potsdam, and during World War II he worked for the Navy in Berlin. After the war, on the initiative of the former Hasse assistant Hermann Ludwig Schmid , he got a job at the Berlin Academy of Sciences . On his initiative, Grün also received his doctorate in Berlin in 1948. In 1953 he followed Schmid to the University of Würzburg , where he taught group theory from 1954 to 1963. During this time he also regularly took part in group theory meetings in Oberwolfach . In 1971 he moved back to West Berlin.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He had, as he informed Hasse, studied the number theoretical works of Kummer , Dirichlet , Dedekind and David Hilbert's number report as well as Hasse's work on class field theory, which he said particularly influenced him.
  2. ↑ Grün Zur Fermatschen Hypothesis , Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematics, Volume 170, 1934, pp. 231–234
  3. ↑ Grün's contributions to group theory I , Journal für Reine und Angewandte Mathematik, Volume 174, 1935, pp. 1-14
personal data
SURNAME Green, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 1974
Place of death Berlin