Curt Meyer (19 November 1919 – 18 April 2011) was a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. He made notable contributions to

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

. A native of Bremerhaven, Meyer obtained his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

from the

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

in 1950, under supervision of

Helmut Hasse Helmut Hasse (; 25 August 1898 – 26 December 1979) was a German mathematician working in algebraic number theory, known for fundamental contributions to class field theory, the application of ''p''-adic numbers to local class field theory and ...

. In 1966 he became professor of mathematics at the

University of Cologne The University of Cologne (german: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388 and is one of the most prestigious and research intensive universities in Germany. It was the sixth university to ...

, a position he held until 1985. Among his most important results is an alternative solution to the

class number 1 problem In mathematics, the Gauss class number problem (for imaginary quadratic fields), as usually understood, is to provide for each ''n'' ≥ 1 a complete list of imaginary quadratic fields \mathbb(\sqrt) (for negative integers ''d'') having ...

, building on the original

Stark–Heegner theorem In number theory, the Baker–Heegner–Stark theorem states precisely which quadratic imaginary number fields admit unique factorisation in their ring of integers. It solves a special case of Gauss's class number problem of determining the number ...

Books by Meyer

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References

External links

* 1919 births 2011 deaths 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Academic staff of the University of Cologne {{Germany-mathematician-stub