Walter Feit

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Walter Feit

Walter Feit (born October 26, 1930 in Vienna , † July 29, 2004 in Branford , Connecticut ) was an American mathematician who dealt with group theory.

Life

Feit fled Vienna to England in 1939 - his parents put him on the last train with Jewish children that left Austria (his parents died in the Holocaust ). During the war he went to school in Oxford, where he also won a scholarship in 1943. In 1946 he went to the USA, where he lived with an uncle in Miami. He began his studies at the University of Chicago, where he received his master's degree in 1950. Then he went to the University of Michigan to the then leading group theorist Richard Brauer . When he went to Harvard, he heard from Jean Dieudonné , but continued to correspond with Brauer. In 1955 he received his doctorate under Walter Thrall at the University of Michigan ( Topics in the theory of group characters ). In 1953 he was an instructor at Cornell University , where he also became a professor. From 1964 he was a professor at Yale University , where he was also chairman of the department. In 2003 he retired.

Feit dealt with the theory of finite groups and representation theory (theory of characters, modular representation theory from Brauer). His most famous result is the monumental evidence of John G. Thompson (with whom he from 1959 worked at the University of Chicago) from 1963 odd about the solvability of all finite groups order ( On solvability of groups of odd order. Pacific Journal of Mathematics). This result, now known as the Feit-Thompson Theorem , was essential to the program of classification of finite simple groups . Feit also worked with Graham Higman in 1964 on generalized polygons.

In 1965 he received the Cole Prize in Algebra. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1977 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1978 . Feit was also once Vice President of the International Mathematical Union . In 1970 he gave a plenary lecture at the ICM in Nice ( The current situation in the theory of finite simple groups ).

His son Paul Feit is also a professor of mathematics.

One of his PhD students is Ronald Solomon , who also played a leading role in the classification program of finite simple groups.

Fonts

  • The representation theory of finite groups. North Holland 1982, ISBN 0-444-86155-6
  • Characters of finite groups. New York, Benjamin 1967

See also

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ for formal reasons, the work was actually supervised and assessed by Brauer
  2. ↑ The work of Suzuki, with whom Feit already met in Michigan, was also influential
personal data
SURNAME Feit, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 2004
Place of death Branford , Connecticut