Martin Kneser (21 January 1928 – 16 February 2004) was a German mathematician. His father
Hellmuth Kneser and grandfather
Adolf Kneser
Adolf Kneser (19 March 1862 – 24 January 1930) was a German mathematician.
He was born in Grüssow, Mecklenburg, Germany and died in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland).
He is the father of the mathematician Hellmuth Kneser and the g ...
were also mathematicians.
He obtained his PhD in 1950 from
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 ...
with the dissertation: ''Über den Rand von Parallelkörpern''. His advisor was
Erhard Schmidt
Erhard Schmidt (13 January 1876 – 6 December 1959) was a Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century. Schmidt was born in Tartu (german: link=no, Dorpat), in the Govern ...
.
His name has been given to
Kneser graph
In graph theory, the Kneser graph (alternatively ) is the graph whose vertices correspond to the -element subsets of a set of elements, and where two vertices are adjacent if and only if the two corresponding sets are disjoint. Kneser graphs a ...
s which he studied in 1955. He also gave a simplified proof of the
Fundamental theorem of algebra
The fundamental theorem of algebra, also known as d'Alembert's theorem, or the d'Alembert–Gauss theorem, states that every non- constant single-variable polynomial with complex coefficients has at least one complex root. This includes polynomia ...
.
Kneser was an Invited Speaker of the
ICM in 1962 at Stockholm.
His main publications were on
quadratic forms
In mathematics, a quadratic form is a polynomial with terms all of degree two ("form" is another name for a homogeneous polynomial). For example,
:4x^2 + 2xy - 3y^2
is a quadratic form in the variables and . The coefficients usually belong to ...
and
algebraic groups.
See also
*
Approximation in algebraic groups
*
Betke–Kneser theorem
*
Kneser–Tits conjecture
*
Kneser's theorem (combinatorics)
In the branch of mathematics known as additive combinatorics, Kneser's theorem can refer to one of several related theorems regarding the sizes of certain sumsets in abelian groups. These are named after Martin Kneser, who published them in 1953
...
*
Kneser graphs
References
*
Martin Kneser’s Work on Quadratic Forms and Algebraic Groups
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kneser, Martin
1928 births
2004 deaths
Number theorists
20th-century German mathematicians
21st-century German mathematicians