Otto Schreier

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Otto Schreier (born March 3, 1901 in Vienna ; † June 2, 1929 in Hamburg ) was an Austrian mathematician who dealt with combinatorial group theory and became known, among other things, with the theorem of Nielsen-Schreier .

life and work

His parents were the architect Theodor Schreier (1873–1943) and his wife Anna geb. Turnau (1878-1942). Otto Schreier studied from 1920 at the University of Vienna with Wilhelm Wirtinger , Philipp Furtwängler , Hans Hahn , Kurt Reidemeister , Leopold Vietoris , Josef Lense . In 1923 he received his doctorate from Furtwängler ( on expanding groups ). In 1926 he completed his habilitation with Emil Artin at the University of Hamburg ( The subgroups of the free group . Treatises of the Mathematical Seminar of the University of Hamburg, Volume 5, 1927, pages 172-179), where he also gave lectures before his habilitation.

In 1928 he became a professor at the University of Rostock . During the winter semester he held lectures in Hamburg and Rostock at the same time, but fell seriously ill with sepsis in December 1928 , from which he died six months later.

About the Jordan-Hölder sentence , 1928

Schreier came to group theory through Kurt Reidemeister and first examined node groups in 1924 following work by Max Dehn . His best-known work is his habilitation thesis on the subgroups of free groups, in which he generalized the results of Reidemeister about the normal subgroups. He proved that the subgroups of free groups are themselves free, generalizing a theorem of Jakob Nielsen (1921) ( theorem of Nielsen-Schreier ). In 1927 he showed that the topological fundamental group of the classical Lie groups is Abelian . In 1928 he improved the theorem by Jordan-Hölder ( About the Jordan-Hölderschen sentence. Abhandlungen Mathem. Seminar Universität Hamburg, Vol. 6, 1930, pages 300-302, see illustration). With Emil Artin he proved the Artin-Schreier theorem for the characterization of closed real bodies ( Algebraic construction of real bodies. Abhandlungen Mathem. Seminar Hamburg, Volume 5, 1927).

The Schreier conjecture of group theory says that the group of outer automorphisms of every finite simple group is solvable (the conjecture follows from the classification theorem of finite simple groups, which is generally proven).

Emanuel Sperner received his doctorate in Hamburg in 1928. With him he wrote an introductory textbook on linear algebra, which was known in German-speaking countries at the time .

He died of sepsis after a long illness. A month after his death, his daughter Irene was born. Wife Edith (née Jakoby) and daughter were able to flee to the United States in January 1939. His daughter became a pianist and in October 1959 married the American mathematician Dana Scott (born 1932), whom she had met in Princeton. His parents were murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp as part of the Holocaust .

Fonts

  • About recent studies in the theory of continuous groups. Annual report DMV, vol. 37 1928, based on a lecture given in September 1926 at the general meeting of the DMV.
  • with Emanuel Sperner: Introduction to Analytical Geometry and Algebra , 2 volumes, Teubner 1931, 1935 (Hamburger Mathematische Einzelschriften), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht (Studia mathematica) 1948, Volume 1 in 7th edition 1969, Volume 2 in 6th edition 1963 (English translation Introduction to modern algebra and matrix theory by Chelsea 1951, Volume 2 as Projective Geometry of n dimensions )
  • with Sperner: Lectures on matrices , Hamburg individual mathematical writings, Leipzig, Teubner 1932

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MacTutor History of Mathematics archive: Otto Schreier , accessed on October 7, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Schreier, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1929
Place of death Hamburg