Theodor Molien

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Theodor Georg Andreas Molien (born August 29 . Jul / 10. September  1861 greg. In Riga ; † 25. December 1941 in Tomsk , Soviet Union ) was a Baltic German mathematician who deals with algebra dealt. He is known for the first classification theorem for algebras over complex numbers.

Live and act

Theodor Molien was the son of a high school teacher in Riga and from 1880 studied astronomy at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu) with Anders Lindstedt . In 1883 he wrote his candidate thesis in astronomy ( About the Orbit of the Comet 1880 III. Astronomical News Vol. 105). In the same year he went to Leipzig , where he heard Felix Klein , Carl Gottfried Neumann , Eduard Study , Wilhelm Killing . It was there that Klein encouraged him to do his master's thesis ( on linear transformations of elliptical functions ). In 1885 this was his final thesis in Dorpat, where he was a private lecturer for 15 years (there was only one professor position, and that was filled). In the 1880s he often spent the summers at universities in Germany.

In 1891 his best-known work on systems of higher complex numbers appeared in the Mathematische Annalen , with which he received his doctorate in Dorpat in 1892. In it he proved a classification theorem for extensions of complex number systems, more precisely the semi-simple algebras over the complex numbers (in which the associative law, but not necessarily the commutative law of multiplication, still applies). Later, Élie Cartan classified the semi-simple algebras over the real numbers, and in 1907 Joseph Wedderburn classified the semi-simple algebras over arbitrary fields. Molien proved, among other things, that every associative simple algebra over the field of complex numbers is isomorphic to a matrix algebra over the complex numbers. In 1892 he was accepted into the Moscow Mathematical Society for this work, and in 1894 he received a gold medal for it in France. In Germany, too, the importance of mathematicians like Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Adolf Hurwitz , with whom he corresponded, was immediately recognized. In 1900 he became a professor in Tomsk in Siberia, where he was scientifically isolated, built up a mathematics library and, as the first professor of mathematics in Siberia, organized classes, some of which he wrote the textbooks himself. In 1913 he had to resign because of his well-known liberal political views and taught at a high school for women, but in 1917 he became a professor again.

In addition to his work on hypercomplex number systems, he also worked, following Frobenius, on polynomial invariants of finite groups. Among other things, he showed in 1898 the decomposition of the representations of finite groups in the vector space of the polynomials into variables over the complex numbers in irreducible representations.

Theodor Molien spoke or read thirteen languages ​​(in addition to German, Estonian, Russian, also French, English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian).

In the 1890s he was considered one of the strongest chess players in Dorpat and was president of the local chess club. In a simultaneous game against former world champion Wilhelm Steinitz , he narrowly missed the draw . In 1897, Andreas Ascharin completed an investigation into the rook versus runner final two years earlier . He calculated the total number of positions in this endgame to be over 12 million and the winning positions of them to be around 100,000. At that time, several chess studies were published by him on the subject.

literature

  • Nikolai Fjodorowitsch Kanunow: Fyodor Eduardowitsch Molin 1861-1941 . Isdatelstwo Nauka, Moskwa 1983 (Russian).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ I. Blaus; S. Grodsenski: F. Molin - Matematik i schachmatist. Šahs, No. 17, 1981. pp. 14-15

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Molien, Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Molien, Theodor Georg Andreas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1941
Place of death Tomsk , Soviet Union