Georg August Nöbeling (12 November 1907 – 16 February 2008) 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 ...
.
Education and career
Born and raised in
Lüdenscheid
Lüdenscheid () is a city in the Märkischer Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Sauerland region.
Geography
Lüdenscheid is located on the saddle of the watershed between the Lenne and Volme rivers which ...
, Nöbeling studied
mathematics and
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
at
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
between 1927 and 1929 and
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...
, where he was a student of
Karl Menger
Karl Menger (January 13, 1902 – October 5, 1985) was an Austrian-American mathematician, the son of the economist Carl Menger. In mathematics, Menger studied the theory of algebras and the dimension theory of low- regularity ("rough") curves ...
and received his PhD in 1931 on a generalization of the
embedding theorem, which for one special case can be visualized by the
Menger sponge
In mathematics, the Menger sponge (also known as the Menger cube, Menger universal curve, Sierpinski cube, or Sierpinski sponge) is a fractal curve. It is a three-dimensional generalization of the one-dimensional Cantor set and two-dimensional Si ...
. Nöbeling worked and researched in Menger's Mathematical Colloquium with
Kurt Gödel,
Franz Alt,
Abraham Wald
Abraham Wald (; hu, Wald Ábrahám, yi, אברהם וואַלד; – ) was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician who contributed to decision theory, geometry, and econometrics and founded the field of statistical sequential analysis. One ...
,
Olga Taussky-Todd
Olga Taussky-Todd (August 30, 1906, Olomouc, Austria-Hungary (present-day Olomouc, Czech Republic) – October 7, 1995, Pasadena, California) was an Austrian and later Czech-American mathematician. She published more than 300 research papers on ...
and others.
In 1933, he moved to the
University of Erlangen
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
, where he habilitated in 1935 under
Otto Haupt and obtained a professorship at the same place in 1940. His work focused on
analysis
Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...
,
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...
, and
geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...
. 1968/1969 he solved
Specker's theorem on
abelian group
In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is comm ...
s.
As
Rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
(1962–1963) of the University of Erlangen he oversaw the merge with the business college in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
. He also served twice as the chairman of the
German Mathematical Society
The German Mathematical Society (german: Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung, DMV) is the main professional society of German mathematicians and represents German mathematics within the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the International Math ...
and is a member of the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2007.
[Wulf-Dieter Geyer:]
Georg Nöbeling zum 100. Geburtstag
" ''Akademie Aktuell: Zeitschrift der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften'
36–38.
Publications (selected)
* Georg Nöbeling: "Über eine n-dimensionale Universalmenge im
(on a n-dimensional universal set for metric spaces in
." ''Mathematische Annalen'' 104 (1931), pp. 71–80.
* Georg Nöbeling: "Verallgemeinerung eines Satzes von E. Specker (Generalization of a Theorem by E. Specker)". ''Inventiones mathematicae'' 6 (1968), pp. 41–55.
See also
*
Universal space
Notes
External links
List of deceased fellows of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nobeling, Georg
1907 births
2008 deaths
20th-century German mathematicians
Mathematical analysts
Topologists
German centenarians
Men centenarians
University of Göttingen alumni
University of Vienna alumni
Academic staff of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
People from Lüdenscheid