Wolfgang Groebner

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Wolfgang Groebner

Wolfgang Gröbner ( February 2, 1899 in Gossensaß - August 20, 1980 ) was an Austrian mathematician and free thinker who worked primarily in the field of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry . His name is known for the Gröbner base and the Gröbner duality.

Life

Gröbner was born in South Tyrol and attended the Jesuit boarding school in Feldkirch . After participating in the First World War on the Italian Front in 1917, he first studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Graz . After his brother's death in a motorcycle accident, the then deeply religious Gröbner fell into a crisis and led to a break with the Catholic Church. He married and switched to mathematics in 1929 because, according to him, it rejects any authority outside of one's own mind . In 1932 he received his doctorate with the topic A Contribution to the Problem of Minimal Bases at the University of Vienna under Philipp Furtwängler (another of his teachers was Wilhelm Wirtinger ). After that, on the recommendation of Furtwängler, he went to Göttingen as a “ post doc ” for two semesters, at what was then the center of algebraic research at Emmy Noether , where he developed his concept of Gröbner duality and the theory of irreducible ideals in commutative rings, which was suggested by Emmy Noether. He was able to derive and generalize results from Francis Macaulay (Algebraic theory of modular systems, 1916) in a much more transparent way than in the original .

In 1933 he went back to Austria, but could not find a job and worked in his parents' hotel and as an engineer on small power plants until Mauro Picone , an Italian guest, found him a job at the Institute for Applied Mathematics in Rome . After the decision for German citizenship when South Tyrol was annexed to Italy ( option in South Tyrol ), he had to leave Italy in 1939, initially worked in the editorial department for the progress of mathematics in Berlin and became associate professor in Vienna in 1941. During the war he worked under Gustav Doetsch in the mathematics department of the aviation research institute Hermann Göring in Braunschweig . Gröbner was involved in the creation of integral tables and in answering mathematical questions for military and aviation purposes. From this arose after the war his interest in the algebraic theory of (non-linear) differential equations and their perturbation theory via Lie series, especially in computer algebra and celestial mechanics including the calculation of rocket trajectories (for these studies he also solicited funds from NASA and the US Military one). After the war he did not take up his extraordinary position in Vienna because he was in Tyrol and there were demarcation lines in post-war Austria . Since he was not a member of the NSDAP, he was considered unencumbered. In place of Gröbner, Johann Radon moved from Innsbruck to Vienna. In 1947 Gröbner became professor in Innsbruck , which he remained until his retirement in 1970. He died in 1980 after a stroke.

Gröbner bases were actually developed in 1965 in the dissertation of his student Bruno Buchberger . He named the new construction after Gröbner.

Since 1944, Gröbner and Nikolaus Hofreiter published the widespread integral tables.

Gröbner was a representative of a rational metaphysics and repeated his criticism of the Catholic Church and the Christian religion, in addition to in writings and lectures, also in a border problems seminar at the University of Innsbruck. This led to severe criticism from the Catholic Church, which described the seminar as unacademic and blasphemous, and Gröbner, who belonged to the Philosophical Faculty, was forced to give up the seminary in 1964 after massive pressure from the Theological Faculty. Looking back in the 1970s, Gröbner referred to the dispute as a culture war between the liberal professors and the Jesuit faculty and compared it to Kant's dispute between the faculties.

His daughter Waltraud (* 1931), who became Dr. phil. doctorate, married the ancient historian and professor in Heidelberg Fritz Gschnitzer . He had several daughters.

Awards

1969: Wilhelm Exner Medal

Works (selection)

  • About a new ideal theoretical foundation of algebraic geometry , Mathematische Annalen, Volume 115, 1938, pp. 333-358
  • Modern algebraic geometry. The ideal theoretical foundations , Springer 1949
  • On the ideal theoretical foundation of algebraic geometry , Proc. ICM Amsterdam 1954, Volume 3, 1956, pp. 447-456
  • with Ferdinand Cap : The Three-Body Problem Earth-Moon-Spaceship, in: Astronautica Acta, Volume 5, 1959, pp. 287-312
  • The Lie series and their applications , VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1960
  • with Nikolaus Hofreiter: Integraltafel , 2 volumes, 3rd edition, Springer 1961
  • Matrix calculation, BI university pocket books, Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 19966
  • Mathematical methods of physics (BI university handbooks). Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1964, 1965 (2 volumes, together with Peter Albin Lesky ).
  • Method of Lie Series (BI University Paperback; 802). bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1967 (together with H. Knapp).
  • Algebraic Geometry . Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1969/70 (2 vol.).
  1. Arithmetic theory of polynomial rings . 1969 (BI University Pocket Book; 737).
  2. General theory of commutative rings and bodies . 1970 (BI university paperback; 273).
  • On the ideal theoretical foundation of algebraic geometry , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Ways of Research, 1972
  • Differential equations , 2 volumes, Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1977

literature

  • Peter Goller / Gerhard Oberkofler : "... that real reasons are given at the university for the teaching that is represented there!" Wolfgang Gröbner (1899–1980). Mathematicians and free thinkers , in: Central Library for Physics in Vienna (Ed.): Austrian Mathematics and Physics. Universitätsverlag Wagner, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-900490-03-1 .
  • Gerhard Oberkofler: Knowledge and Belief. A discussion between the mathematicians Leopold Vietoris and Wolfgang Gröbner , in: Gerhard Banse, Siegfried Wollgast (Hrsg.): Philosophy and science in the past and present. Festschrift for Herbert Hörz's 70th birthday, Berlin 2003, pp. 315–337
  • Roman Liedl, Heinrich Reitberger: Wolfgang Gröbner (11.2.1899-20.8.1980) in commemoration , in: Yearbook Overviews Mathematics 1981, pp. 255ff
  • Edmund Hlawka : Laudation for Wolfgang Gröbner on the occasion of his 80th birthday, in: Internationale Mathematische Nachrichten, Volume 124, 1980, pp. 74–80

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.uibk.ac.at/universitaetsarchiv/literatur/
  2. ↑ Published as the minimal basis of the quaternion group , monthly books for mathematics and physics, Volume 41, 1934, pp. 78–84
  3. ↑ Gröbner, On irreducible ideals in commutative rings , Mathematische Annalen, Volume 110, 1934, pp. 197-22
  4. ↑ Biography at the University of Innsbruck PDF
  5. ↑ For example, his book Der Weg aufwärts , Berlin, Leipzig 1935
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Gröbner's "Lie Series Mathematics" and "Border Problems Seminar" (1963/64) , University of Innsbruck
  7. ↑ Dagmar Drüll, Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986, Springer 2009
personal data
SURNAME Groebner, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Gossensaß
DATE OF DEATH 20th August 1980