Georg August Nöbeling (12 November 1907 – 16 February 2008) 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

Education and career

Born and raised in

Lüdenscheid Lüdenscheid () is a city in the Märkischer Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Sauerland region. Geography Lüdenscheid is located on the saddle of the watershed between the Lenne and Volme rivers whic ...

, Nöbeling studied

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

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 ...

between 1927 and 1929 and

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 was a student of

Karl Menger Karl Menger (; January 13, 1902 – October 5, 1985) was an Austrian-born American mathematician, the son of the economist Carl Menger. In mathematics, Menger studied the theory of algebra over a field, algebras and the dimension theory of low-r ...

and received his PhD in 1931 on a generalization of the embedding theorem, which for one special case can be visualized by the

Menger sponge In mathematics, the Menger sponge (also known as the Menger cube, Menger universal curve, Sierpinski cube, or Sierpinski sponge) is a fractal curve. It is a three-dimensional generalization of the one-dimensional Cantor set and two-dimensional Sie ...

. Nöbeling worked and researched in Menger's Mathematical Colloquium with

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 ...

, Franz Alt,

Abraham Wald Abraham Wald (; ; , ; – ) was a Hungarian and American mathematician and statistician who contributed to decision theory, geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis. One of his well-known statistical works was ...

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), ...

and others. In 1933, he moved to the

University of Erlangen A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

, where he habilitated in 1935 under Otto Haupt and obtained a professorship at the same place in 1940. His work focused on

analysis Analysis (: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (38 ...

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

, and

geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

. 1968/1969 he solved Specker's theorem on

abelian group In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is commu ...

s. As Rector (1962–1963) of the University of Erlangen he oversaw the merge with the business college in

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

. He also served twice as the chairman of the

German Mathematical Society The German Mathematical Society (, DMV) is the main professional society of German mathematicians and represents German mathematics within the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the International Mathematical Union (IMU). It was founded in ...

and is a member of the

Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities () is an independent public institution, located in Munich. It appoints scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of knowledge within their subject. The general goal of th ...

. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2007.Wulf-Dieter Geyer:
Georg Nöbeling zum 100. Geburtstag
" ''Akademie Aktuell: Zeitschrift der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften'

36–38.

Publications (selected)

* Georg Nöbeling: "Über eine n-dimensionale Universalmenge im

\mathbb^

(on a n-dimensional universal set for metric spaces in

\mathbb^

." ''Mathematische Annalen'' 104 (1931), pp. 71–80. * Georg Nöbeling: "Verallgemeinerung eines Satzes von E. Specker (Generalization of a Theorem by E. Specker)". ''Inventiones mathematicae'' 6 (1968), pp. 41–55.

Notes

External links

List of deceased fellows of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nobeling, Georg 1907 births 2008 deaths 20th-century German mathematicians German mathematical analysts German topologists German men centenarians University of Göttingen alumni University of Vienna alumni Academic staff of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg People from Lüdenscheid Presidents of the German Mathematical Society

Education and career

Publications (selected)

See also

Notes

External links