Walter Ledermann

Walter Ledermann (born March 18, 1911 in Berlin , † May 22, 2009 in London ) was a German-born British mathematician who studied algebra and probability theory.

Ledermann came from a Jewish family and attended high school in Berlin. In 1928 he graduated from the Leibniz Gymnasium and studied physics and mathematics at the Humboldt University in Berlin with the aim of becoming a teacher with Issai Schur , Erhard Schmidt , Richard von Mises , Erwin Schrödinger , Heinz Hopf , and Max Planck , among others . In 1931 he also studied a semester in Marburg . He passed his state examination with Schur and Ludwig Bieberbach in 1933 and then left National Socialist Germany. He continued his studies on a scholarship at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland , where he received his doctorate in matrix theory in 1936 with Herbert Westren Turnbull . In 1937 he became a lecturer in Dundee and was during this time private (mathematical) assistant to the psychology professor Godfrey Thompson in Edinburgh , for which he received a doctorate (D. Sc.) From the University of Edinburgh in 1940. He also worked with Max Born and Alexander Aitken in Edinburgh. In 1938 he was assistant to Turnbull in St. Andrews, where he stayed until 1946.

In 1940 he became a British citizen.

In 1946 he became a lecturer at the University of Manchester , where he was secretary of the first British Mathematical Colloquium. In Manchester there was also a collaboration with Harry Reuter (also a refugee from Germany) on stochastic processes. Most recently he was a senior lecturer in Manchester. In 1962 he became a reader at the then newly founded University of Sussex , where he became a professor in 1965 and retired in 1978.

From 1979 he lived in London.

In addition to probability theory and linear algebra, he dealt with homology theory , group theory and number theory. From 1968 to 1971 he was editor of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society and 1974 to 1977 of the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society. In 1944 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was an honorary doctorate from the Open University (1993).

Fonts

• Introduction to the Theory of Finite Groups, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, Interscience 1949, 1953, 1957
• Complex numbers, London, Routledge and Paul 1960
• Integral calculus, Dover 1964
• Multiple integrals, London, Routledge and Paul, Dover 1966
• Introduction to group theory, Oliver and Boyd 1973, Addison-Wesley, 2nd edition 1996
• Introduction to group characters, Cambridge University, 1977, 1987
• as main editor: Handbook of applicable mathematics, 10 volumes, Wiley, 1980 to 1991

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Walter Ledermann. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Memories from Ledermann, 2000
• Literature by and about Walter Ledermann in the catalog of the German National Library