Wolfgang Krull (26 August 1899 – 12 April 1971) 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 ...
who made fundamental contributions to
commutative algebra
Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideals, and modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory build on commutative algebra. Prom ...
, introducing concepts that are now central to the subject.
Krull was born and went to school in
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...
. He attended the Universities of
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
,
Rostock
Rostock (), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (german: link=no, Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, c ...
and finally
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
from 1919–1921, where he earned his doctorate under
Alfred Loewy. He worked as an instructor and professor at Freiburg, then spent a decade at 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 ...
. In 1939 Krull moved to become chair at the
University of Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...
, where he remained for the rest of his life. Wolfgang Krull was a member of the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
.
His 35 doctoral students include
Wilfried Brauer,
Karl-Otto Stöhr and
Jürgen Neukirch
Jürgen Neukirch (24 July 1937 – 5 February 1997) was a German mathematician known for his work on algebraic number theory.
Education and career
Neukirch received his diploma in mathematics in 1964 from the University of Bonn. For his Ph.D. ...
.
See also
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Cohen structure theorem In mathematics, the Cohen structure theorem, introduced by , describes the structure of complete Noetherian local rings.
Some consequences of Cohen's structure theorem include three conjectures of Krull:
*Any complete regular equicharacteristic ...
*
Jacobson ring
In algebra, a Hilbert ring or a Jacobson ring is a ring such that every prime ideal is an intersection of primitive ideals. For commutative rings primitive ideals are the same as maximal ideals so in this case a Jacobson ring is one in which ever ...
*
Local ring In abstract algebra, more specifically ring theory, local rings are certain rings that are comparatively simple, and serve to describe what is called "local behaviour", in the sense of functions defined on varieties or manifolds, or of algebraic n ...
*
Prime ideal
In algebra, a prime ideal is a subset of a ring that shares many important properties of a prime number in the ring of integers. The prime ideals for the integers are the sets that contain all the multiples of a given prime number, together with ...
*
Real algebraic geometry In mathematics, real algebraic geometry is the sub-branch of algebraic geometry studying real algebraic sets, i.e. real-number solutions to algebraic equations with real-number coefficients, and mappings between them (in particular real polynomial ...
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Regular local ring In commutative algebra, a regular local ring is a Noetherian local ring having the property that the minimal number of generators of its maximal ideal is equal to its Krull dimension. In symbols, let ''A'' be a Noetherian local ring with maximal ide ...
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Valuation ring In abstract algebra, a valuation ring is an integral domain ''D'' such that for every element ''x'' of its field of fractions ''F'', at least one of ''x'' or ''x''−1 belongs to ''D''.
Given a field ''F'', if ''D'' is a subring of ''F'' suc ...
*
Krull dimension
In commutative algebra, the Krull dimension of a commutative ring ''R'', named after Wolfgang Krull, is the supremum of the lengths of all chains of prime ideals. The Krull dimension need not be finite even for a Noetherian ring. More generally th ...
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Krull ring In commutative algebra, a Krull ring, or Krull domain, is a commutative ring with a well behaved theory of prime factorization. They were introduced by Wolfgang Krull in 1931. They are a higher-dimensional generalization of Dedekind domains, which ...
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Krull topology In mathematics, a profinite group is a topological group that is in a certain sense assembled from a system of finite groups.
The idea of using a profinite group is to provide a "uniform", or "synoptic", view of an entire system of finite groups. ...
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Krull–Azumaya theorem
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Krull–Schmidt category In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a Krull–Schmidt category is a generalization of categories in which the Krull–Schmidt theorem holds. They arise, for example, in the study of finite-dimensional module (mathematics), modules over an a ...
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Krull–Schmidt theorem
In mathematics, the Krull–Schmidt theorem states that a group subjected to certain finiteness conditions on chains of subgroups, can be uniquely written as a finite direct product of indecomposable subgroups.
Definitions
We say that a group ''G ...
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Krull's intersection theorem
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Krull's principal ideal theorem
In commutative algebra, Krull's principal ideal theorem, named after Wolfgang Krull (1899–1971), gives a bound on the height of a principal ideal in a commutative Noetherian ring. The theorem is sometimes referred to by its German name, ''Krull ...
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Krull's separation lemma
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Krull's theorem In mathematics, and more specifically in ring theory, Krull's theorem, named after Wolfgang Krull, asserts that a nonzero ring has at least one maximal ideal. The theorem was proved in 1929 by Krull, who used transfinite induction. The theorem a ...
Publications
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References
External links
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1899 births
1971 deaths
20th-century German mathematicians
Nazi Party members
Algebraists
{{Germany-mathematician-stub