Józef Schreier (; 18 February 1909, Drohobycz,

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

– April 1943, Drohobycz,

Occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...

) was a Polish

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 ...

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

origin, known for his work in

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (for example, Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics ...

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ( ...

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 ...

. He was a member of the

Lwów School of Mathematics The Lwów school of mathematics () was a group of Polish mathematicians who worked in the interwar period in Lwów, Poland (since 1945 Lviv, Ukraine). The mathematicians often met at the famous Scottish Café to discuss mathematical problems, ...

and a victim of the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. Józef Schreier was born on 18 February 1909 in Drohobycz. His father was a rabbi and doctor of philosophy. His cousin was the musician Alfred Schreyer. From 1927-31 he studied at the Jan Kazimierz University in

Lwów Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

. In his first published paper, he defined what later came to be known as Schreier sets in order to show that not all

Banach space In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (, ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vectors and ...

s possess the weak Banach-Saks property, disproving a conjecture of

Stefan Banach Stefan Banach ( ; 30 March 1892 – 31 August 1945) was a Polish mathematician who is generally considered one of the 20th century's most important and influential mathematicians. He was the founder of modern functional analysis, and an original ...

and

Stanisław Saks Stanisław Saks (30 December 1897 – 23 November 1942) was a Polish mathematician and university tutor, a member of the Lwów School of Mathematics, known primarily for his membership in the Scottish Café circle, an extensive monograph on the t ...

. Schreier sets were later discovered independently by researchers in

Ramsey theory Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of the mathematical field of combinatorics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in R ...

. Schreier completed his master's degree ''On tournament elimination systems'' in 1932 under the direction of

Hugo Steinhaus Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus ( , ; 14 January 1887 – 25 February 1972) was a Polish mathematician and educator. Steinhaus obtained his PhD under David Hilbert at Göttingen University in 1911 and later became a professor at the Jan Kazimierz Univers ...

. Schreier correctly conjectured that to determine the second largest number in an unordered list requires at least

n + \lceil \log_2 n \rceil -2

comparisons. In 1934, he completed his doctorate, ''On finite base in topological groups'' under Banach. In 1932 he married Zofia Rosenblatt. Schreier often played

blindfold chess Blindfold chess, also known as ''sans voir'', is a form of chess play wherein the players do not see the positions of the pieces and do not touch them. This forces players to maintain a mental model of the positions of the pieces. Moves are commun ...

. He was a friend of

Stanisław Ulam Stanisław Marcin Ulam ( ; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish and American mathematician, nuclear physicist and computer scientist. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the History of the Teller–Ulam design, Telle ...

and co-authored eight papers with him. They were the only two undergraduates who attended the meetings at the Scottish Café in

. (Schreier contributed ten questions to the Scottish Book.) Together they proved the Baire–Schreier–Ulam theorem and Schreier–Ulam theorem. According to Ulam, With the outbreak of World War II, Eastern Poland including Drohobycz was occupied by the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in accordance with the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...

. After

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

, this territory was invaded by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. The Jews of Drohobycz were confined to the Drohobycz Ghetto. In April 1943, the Germans discovered—or were informed of—an underground bunker in which Schreier was hiding with other Jews. It took three days for them to force their way in. Schreier committed suicide by

cyanide In chemistry, cyanide () is an inorganic chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Ionic cyanides contain the cyanide anion . This a ...

rather than be captured. Of a prewar Jewish population of 10,000 in Drohobycz, approximately 400 survived the war. Schreier's wife was one of them and later moved to Israel, where she remarried. Schreier's cousin Gina Schreier survived the war in Poland and later emigrated to Brazil with her husband, Bronisław Hoenig. After Ulam’s death, Ulam’s wife passed her the articles they had primarily written together.

Publications

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schreier, Józef 1909 births People from Drohobych Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Lwów School of Mathematics Polish Jews who died in the Holocaust 1943 suicides 1943 deaths Suicides by cyanide poisoning Suicides in Poland Suicides by Jews during the Holocaust