Siegfried Johannes Gottwald (30 March 1943 – 20 September 2015) was a German mathematician,

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

ian and

historian of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopo ...

Life and work

Gottwald was born in Limbach, Saxony in 1943. From 1961 to 1966, he studied mathematics at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

, where he was awarded his doctor title in 1969 and his habilitation in 1977. He was

tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

d professor of non-classical and

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

logic at the University of Leipzig where he taught from 1972 to his retirement in 2008. His main research areas are

fuzzy set In mathematics, fuzzy sets (a.k.a. uncertain sets) are sets whose elements have degrees of membership. Fuzzy sets were introduced independently by Lotfi A. Zadeh in 1965 as an extension of the classical notion of set. At the same time, defined ...

s and fuzzy methodologies,

many-valued logic Many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) refers to a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values (i.e., "true" and "false ...

and the

history of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...

. He published several books on many-valued logic and on fuzzy sets and their applications, a co-authored textbook on

calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...

, and a reader in the history of logic. He also contributed to the German biographical dictionary of mathematicians, ''Lexikon berühmter Mathematiker''. Gottwald was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy at University of Leipzig for several years. He was married with three children.

Published books

* *S. Gottwald, P. Günther, K. Beyer, V. Wünsch: ''Grundkurs Analysis.'' Parts 1–4, Math.-Naturwiss. Bibl., Vols. 53–56, Teubner: Leipzig 1972–74. * * * * * *

References

External links

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gottwald, Siegfried 1943 births 2015 deaths People from Limbach-Oberfrohna 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians Mathematical logicians Academic staff of Leipzig University Leipzig University alumni Historians of science