Friederich Pius Philipp Furtwängler (April 21, 1869 – May 19, 1940) was a German number theorist.

Biography

Furtwängler wrote an 1896 doctoral dissertation at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

cubic form In mathematics, a cubic form is a homogeneous polynomial of degree 3, and a cubic hypersurface is the zero set of a cubic form. In the case of a cubic form in three variables, the zero set is a cubic plane curve. In , Boris Delone and Dmitry Fadd ...

s (''Zur Theorie der in Linearfaktoren zerlegbaren ganzzahligen ternären kubischen Formen''), under

Felix Klein Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...

. Most of his academic life, from 1912 to 1938, was spent at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

, where he taught for example

Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( ; ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel profoundly ...

, who later said that Furtwängler's lectures on number theory were the best mathematical lectures that he ever heard; Gödel had originally intended to become a physicist but turned to mathematics partly as a result of Furtwängler's lectures. From 1916, Furtwängler became increasingly paralysed and, without notes, lectured from a wheelchair while his assistant wrote equations on the blackboard. Some of Furtwängler's doctoral students were Wolfgang Gröbner, Nikolaus Hofreiter, Henry Mann,

Otto Schreier Otto Schreier (3 March 1901 in Vienna, Austria – 2 June 1929 in Hamburg, Germany) was a Jewish-Austrian mathematician who made major contributions in combinatorial group theory and in the topology of Lie groups. Life His parents were the arch ...

, and

Olga Taussky-Todd Olga Taussky-Todd (August 30, 1906 – October 7, 1995) was an Austrian and later Czech Americans, Czech-American mathematician. She published more than 300 research papers on algebraic number theory, integral matrices, and Matrix (mathematics), ...

. Through these and others, he has over 3000 academic descendants. He is now best known for his contribution to the

principal ideal theorem In mathematics, the principal ideal theorem of class field theory, a branch of algebraic number theory, says that extending ideals gives a mapping on the class group of an algebraic number field to the class group of its Hilbert class field, w ...

in the form of his ''Beweis des Hauptidealsatzes für Klassenkörper algebraischer Zahlkörper'' (1929). Philipp Furtwängler was a grandson of the organ builder Philipp Furtwängler (1800-1867) and a second cousin of the conductor

Wilhelm Furtwängler Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , ; ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest Symphony, symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a majo ...

Selected publications

*with

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 ...

and W. Jehne: Allgemeine Theorie der algebraischen Zahlen. Vol. 8. Teubner, 1953.

References

Sources

* *

External links

* * http://bibliothek.bbaw.de/kataloge/literaturnachweise/furtwaen/literatur.pdf (PDF-Datei; 35 kB)
Friederich Pius Philipp Furtwängler
at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive 20th-century German mathematicians Austrian mathematicians 1869 births 1940 deaths 19th-century German mathematicians German number theorists Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary Academic staff of the University of Vienna University of Göttingen alumni Scientists from Lower Saxony German emigrants to Austria-Hungary Mathematicians from the German Empire

Philipp Philipp is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include: "Philipp" has also been a shortened version of Philippson, a German surname especially prevalent amongst German Jews and Dutch Jews. Surname * Adolf Philipp (18 ...

{{Germany-mathematician-stub

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References

Sources

External links