Axel Thue (; 19 February 1863 – 7 March 1922) was a
Norwegian 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
, known for his original work in
diophantine approximation
In number theory, the study of Diophantine approximation deals with the approximation of real numbers by rational numbers. It is named after Diophantus of Alexandria.
The first problem was to know how well a real number can be approximated ...
and
combinatorics
Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...
.
Work
Thue published his first important paper in 1909.
He stated in 1914 the so-called
word problem for semigroups
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its ...
or Thue problem, closely related to the
halting problem
In computability theory (computer science), computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running, or continue to run for ...
.
[ Ronald V. Book and Friedrich Otto, ''String-rewriting Systems'', Springer, 1993, , p. 36.]
His only known PhD student was
Thoralf Skolem.
The esoteric programming language Thue is named after him.
Publications
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See also
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References
External links
Axel Thue private archiveexists at NTNU University Librar
Dorabiblioteket
1863 births
1922 deaths
20th-century Norwegian mathematicians
Number theorists
People from Tønsberg
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