# Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Germany

For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.

The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten.'
-- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London

## Holy Roman Empire

##### Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 1464)

German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer.

Believed he had calculated $\pi$ exactly, as $3 \cdotp 1423$, but then also gave a good trigonometrical approximation later used by Willebrord van Royen Snell
show full page

##### Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436 – 1476)

Better known under his Latinized name (Johannes Müller) Regiomontanus: both surnames mean King's mountain.

German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, translator, instrument maker and Catholic bishop.

Pupil of Georg von Peuerbach, whose uncompleted work he continued.

Set up a printing press at Nuremberg in 1471 -- 1472 for printing scientific works.

First publisher of such scientific literature.

Became internationally famous within his own lifetime.
show full page

##### Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528)

German painter, printmaker and theorist whose theoretical treatises involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.
show full page

##### Ludolph van Ceulen (1540 – 1610)

German-Dutch mathematician best known for his calculation of the the value of $\pi$.

The Ludolphine number is the expression of the value of $\pi$ to $35$ decimal places:

$3 \cdotp 14159 \, 26535 \, 89793 \, 23846 \, 26433 \, 83279 \, 50288 \ldots$

##### Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630)

German mathematician and astronomer best known nowadays for Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.

Inherited the papers of Tycho Brahe and spent many years analysing his observations, looking for patterns.

His most significant contribution to scientific thought was his deduction that the orbits of the planets are elliptical.

Also pre-empted the methods of integral calculus to find the volume of a solid of revolution by slicing it into thin disks, calculating the volume of each, and then adding those volumes together.
show full page

##### Johann Faulhaber (1580 – 1635)

German surveyor and engineer who was also a mathematician of the cossist tradition.

A significant influence on several mathematicians, including René Descartes, Jacob Bernoulli and Carl Jacobi.

Best known for his work on series of powers.
show full page

##### Nicholas Mercator (c. 1620 – 1687)

German mathematician who designed a marine chronometer for Charles II, and designed and constructed the fountains at the Palace of Versailles.

Known for the Newton-Mercator Series.
show full page

##### Johann Friedrich Pfaff (1765 – 1825)

German mathematician who was a precursor of the German school, being a direct influence on Carl Friedrich Gauss.
show full page

##### August Leopold Crelle (1780 – 1855)

Self-educated and enthusiastic German mathematician whose most important work was founding Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, better known as Crelle's Journal.
show full page

##### Georg Simon Ohm (1789 – 1834)

German physicist and mathematician best remembered for Ohm's Law.
show full page

##### Wilhelm August Förstemann (1791 – 1836)

German mathematician best known for his textbooks, which were standard German grammar schools texts for some considerable time.

Published a series of articles on on the task of rationalizing equations.
show full page

##### Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach (1800 – 1834)

German geometer best known for Feuerbach's Theorem.

Introduced homogeneous coordinates in $1827$, independently of August Ferdinand Möbius.
show full page

##### Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804 – 1891)

German physicist who invented the first electromagnetic telegraph with Carl Friedrich Gauss.
show full page

## Electoral Palatinate

##### Jakob Köbel (1462 – 1533)

German mathematician and state official about whom little can be found on the internet.
show full page

##### Elisabeth of the Palatinate (1618 – 1680)

Princess of the Electorate of the Palatinate who studied (among other things) mathematics and philosophy with René Descartes.

Her correspondence with Descartes survives as a record of the nature of philosophical and religious debates in that period.

Renowned for her intelligence and humanism.
show full page

##### Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619 – 1682)

Prince of the lines of both the Electorate of the Palatinate and the House of Stuart, who later in life turned to science and mathematics.

Known for posing the question which is now known as Prince Rupert's Cube.

Renowned for his military flair, but also notorious for his heavy-handed treatment of defeated enemies.
show full page

##### Andreas Freiherr von Ettingshausen (1796 – 1878)

German mathematician and physicist.

The first to build an electromagnetic machine.

Invented the notation $\dbinom n k$ for the binomial coefficient.
show full page

##### Oskar Bolza (1857 – 1942)

German mathematician best known for his research in the calculus of variations, particularly influenced by Karl Weierstrass's $1879$ lectures on the subject.
show full page

## Esslingen am Neckar

##### Michael Stifel (1487 – 1567)

German monk and mathematician who made significant advances in mathematical notation, including the juxtaposition technique for indicating multiplication.

The first to use the term exponent. Published rules for calculation of powers.

The first to use a standard method to solve quadratic equations.

Also an early adopter of negative and irrational numbers.
show full page

## Bavaria

##### Adam Ries (1492 – 1559)

Influential German mathematician who wrote some important instructional works, including sets of tables for calculations.
show full page

##### Simon Jacob (c. 1500 – 1564)

German reckoner about whom little is known.

Published a book demonstrating that he understood some facts about the Fibonacci numbers that were not rediscovered until centuries later.
show full page

##### Christopher Clavius (1538 – 1612)

German jesuit and logician.

Best known for:

• Clavius's Law (also written as Clavius' Law), otherwise known as the Consequentia Mirabilis, which states that if by assuming the negation of a proposition you can prove its truth, then that proposition is true.
• Being instrumental in the development of the Gregorian calendar.
• Writing highly-acclaimed and well-received text-books.

##### Johann Georg von Soldner (1776 – 1833)

German mathematician, physicist and astronomer.

Calculated the Euler-Mascheroni constant to 24 places.

The first one to predict (100 years before Einstein) that light rays would be bent by the gravitational fields of stars.
show full page

##### Walther von Dyck (1856 – 1934)

Walther Franz Anton von Dyck was a German mathematician who was one of the pioneers of group theory.

He was originally known as Walther Dyck: the von was added later when he was ennobled.

The first to define a group in the abstract sense. The first to study a group by generators.

A student of Felix Klein.
show full page

## County / Duchy of Württemberg

##### Johannes Scheubel (1494 – 1570)

German mathematician noted for his work in popularising the use of algebra throughout Europe.

Also published an edition of the first six books of Euclid's The Elements.
show full page

##### Johann Wilhelm von Camerer (1763 – 1847)

German protestant theologian, mathematician, astronomer and historian of mathematics.

Also published an edition of the first six books of Euclid's The Elements.
show full page

## Saxony

##### Petrus Apianus (1495 – 1552)

Also known as Peter Apian. Born as Peter Bienewitz (or Bennewitz), he Latinized his name (Biene is German and Apis is Latin for "bee") while at Leipzig University.

German humanist and mathematician.

One of his books significantly appears in the painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.
show full page

##### Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 – 1716)

German mathematician and philosopher who is best known for being the co-inventor (independently of Isaac Newton) of calculus.

Took some of the first philosophical steps towards a system of symbolic logic, but his works failed to have much influence on the development of logic, and these ideas were not developed to any significant extent.

Invented the system of binary notation.
show full page

##### Gustav Roch (1839 – 1866)

German mathematician who made significant contributions to the theory of Riemann surfaces.
show full page

##### Friedrich Engel (1861 – 1941)

German mathematician specialising in partial differential equations.
show full page

##### Alwin Reinhold Korselt (1864 – 1947)

German mathematician best known for Korselt's Theorem which provides a definition for Carmichael numbers.

Contributed an early result in relational algebra.
show full page

## Prussia

##### Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651 – 1708)

German mathematician more famous for inventing a brand of porcelain.

Worked on techniques in algebra, and also investigated catacaustic curves.
show full page

##### Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784 – 1846)

Prussian mathematician best known for making a systematic study of what is now known as Bessel's equation.
show full page

##### Heinrich Ferdinand Scherk (1798 – 1885)

German mathematician notable for his work on minimal surfaces and the distribution of prime numbers.
show full page

##### Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804 – 1851)

Prolific Prussian mathematician, now most famous for his work with the elliptic functions.
show full page

##### Ernst Eduard Kummer (1810 – 1893)

German mathematician mostly active in the field of applied mathematics.

Also worked in abstract algebra and field theory.

Related by marriage to Dirichlet.
show full page

##### Theodor Schönemann (1812 – 1868)

Also rendered as Theodor Schoenemann.

German mathematician who obtained some important results in number theory.

Obtained Hensel's Lemma before Hensel, and formulated Eisenstein's Criterion (also known as the Schönemann-Eisenstein Theorem) before Eisenstein.
show full page

##### Heinrich Eduard Heine (1821 – 1881)

German mathematician who worked mainly in analysis.
show full page

##### Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (1823 – 1852)

German mathematician known both as Gotthold Eisenstein and Ferdinand Eisenstein, best known for his work in number theory.

Student of Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Died tragically young of tuberculosis.
show full page

##### Leopold Kronecker (1823 – 1891)

German mathematician most notable for his view that all of mathematics ought to be based on integers.

Also a proponent of the mathematical philosophy of finitism, a forerunner of intuitionism and constructivism.

His influence on the mathematical establishment was considerable.

His views put him in direct opposition most notably to Georg Cantor, who was exploring the mathematics of the transfinite.
show full page

##### August Beer (1825 – 1863)

German physicist and mathematician.

Contributed towards the Beer-Lambert-Bouguer Law.
show full page

##### Elwin Bruno Christoffel (1829 – 1900)

German mathematician and physicist.

Introduced fundamental concepts of differential geometry, opening the way for the development of tensor calculus.

This later provided the mathematical basis for general relativity.
show full page

##### Karl Hermann Amandus Schwarz (1843 – 1921)

More usually known as: Hermann Amandus Schwarz.

German mathematician known for his work in the field of complex analysis.

Often misspelt Schwartz.

Student of Weierstrass.

Best known for his contribution to the Cauchy-Bunyakovsky-Schwarz Inequality.
show full page

##### Moritz Pasch (1843 – 1930)

German mathematician who specialized in the foundations of geometry.

His work served as the inspiration for work by Giuseppe Peano and David Hilbert in their work to re-axiomise the field of geometry.

Best known for his formulation of what is now known as Pasch's Axiom.
show full page

##### Felix Christian Klein (1849 – 1925)

German mathematician best known for his work establishing the connections between geometry and group theory.

Architect of the Erlangen program, which classifies geometries according to their symmetry groups.

Noted for the Klein bottle and the Klein $4$-group.
show full page

##### Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849 – 1917)

German mathematician best known for his work on differential equations and group theory.

Gave the first full proof of the Cayley-Hamilton Theorem.
show full page

##### Arthur Moritz Schönflies (1853 – 1928)

German mathematician known for his contributions to the application of group theory to crystallography, and for work in topology.
show full page

##### Hans Carl Friedrich von Mangoldt (1854 – 1925)

German mathematician who contributed towards the solution of the Prime Number Theorem.
show full page

##### Paul Rudolf Eugen Jahnke (1861 – 1921)

German mathematician best known for his $1909$ Funktionentafeln mit Formeln und Kurven.
show full page

##### David Hilbert (1862 – 1943)

One of the most influential mathematicians in the late $19$th and early $20$th century.

Most famous for the Hilbert 23, a list he delivered in $1900$ of $23$ problems which were at the time still unsolved.
show full page

##### Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865 – 1923)

Prussian-born American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College.

Fostered development of alternating current that enabled expansion of electric power industry in United States.

Formulated mathematical theories for engineers.

Explained the phenomenon of hysteresis.
show full page

##### Georg Wilhelm Scheffers (1866 – 1945)

German mathematician whose specialty was differential geometry.

Also a writer of several well-received textbooks.
show full page

## East Prussia

##### Christian Goldbach (1690 – 1764)

Prussian amateur mathematician who also studied law and medicine.

Best known for posing the Goldbach Conjecture, which also appears as Goldbach's Marginal Conjecture, and a similar weaker conjecture known as Goldbach's Weak Conjecture.
show full page

##### Johann Daniel Titius (1729 – 1796)

German astronomer best known for formulating the Titius-Bode Law, and thence to predict the existence of a planet between Mars and Jupiter.

Also active in the field of biology.
show full page

##### Friedrich Julius Richelot (1808 – 1875)

German mathematician best known for his construction of the regular $257$-gon.
show full page

##### Hermann Günter Grassmann (1809 – 1877)

Prussian mathematician who pioneered the field of linear algebra and vector analysis.

His work was way ahead of its time, and did not receive the recognition it deserved until much later.

During his life he gained more recognition for his study of languages, including Gothic and Sanskrit, than as a mathematician.
show full page

##### Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824 – 1887)

Prussian physicist contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.
show full page

##### Rudolf Lipschitz (1832 – 1903)

German mathematician who worked in many areas, including analysis, number theory and differential geometry.
show full page

##### Johann Gustav Hermes (1846 – 1912)

German mathematician best known for his attempted construction of the regular $65 \, 537$-gon.

Recent research suggests that there may be mistakes in this construction.
show full page

##### Kurt Wilhelm Sebastian Hensel (1861 – 1941)

German mathematician best known for his introduction of $p$-adic numbers.
show full page

##### Felix Hausdorff (1868 – 1942)

German mathematician fundamental in the development of modern topology.

Also active in set theory, measure theory and function theory.

The first to formulate what is now known as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis.
show full page

##### Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (1868 – 1951)

German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics.
show full page

##### Emanuel Lasker (1868 – 1941)

German philosopher and mathematician who was also one of the greatest chess-players of all time.

Inventor of the game now known as Lasca.
show full page

##### Jürgen Kurt Moser (1928 – 1999)

German mathematician mainly involved in dynamical systems.
show full page

## Hamburg

##### Johann Elert Bode (1747 – 1826)

German astronomer known for his reformulation and popularization of the Titius-Bode Law.

Determined the orbit of Uranus and suggested the planet's name.
show full page

##### Johann Martin Zacharias Dase (1824 – 1861)

German mental calculator famous for calculating $\pi$ to $200$ places in $1844$.
show full page

## Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg

##### Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855)

One of the most influential mathematicians of all time, contributing to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis and differential geometry.
show full page

## Saxony-Anhalt

##### August Ferdinand Möbius (1790 – 1868)

German mathematician and theoretical astronomer, active in geometry and number theory.

Best known for inventing the Möbius Strip, although this was actually invented independently by Johann Benedict Listing at around the same time.
show full page

##### Hermann Hankel (1834 – 1873)

German mathematician who worked on complex numbers and quaternions.
show full page

##### Leo August Pochhammer (1841 – 1920)

German mathematician known for his work on special functions.

Also known for the Pochhammer symbol.
show full page

## Free Imperial City of Rothenburg

##### Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (1798 – 1867)

German mathematician best known for his book Geometrie der Lage, an important work in the development of the discipline of projective geometry.
show full page

## North Rhine / Westphalia

##### Daniel Christian Ludolph Lehmus (1780 – 1863)

German mathematician best remembered for the Steiner-Lehmus Theorem.
show full page

##### Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805 – 1859)

Full name: Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.

German mathematician who worked mainly in the field of analysis.

Credited with the first formal definition of a function.
show full page

##### Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (1815 – 1897)

German mathematician whose main work concerned the rigorous foundations of calculus.

Known as "the father of modern analysis".
show full page

## Hesse

##### Moritz Abraham Stern (1807 – 1894)

German mathematician known for formulating Stern's diatomic series.

Also known for the Stern-Brocot Tree which he wrote about in $1858$ and which Brocot independently discovered in $1861$.
show full page

##### Johann Benedict Listing (1808 – 1882)

German mathematician and physicist who coined the term topology in a letter of $1836$.

In $1858$ he invented the Möbius strip at about the same time that August Ferdinand Möbius did.
show full page

##### Gustavus Frankenstein (1827 – 1893)

German-American clock maker, artist, mathematician and writer.

Best known now for being the first to discover a perfect magic cube of order 8.
show full page

##### Alexander Wilhelm von Brill (1842 – 1935)

German mathematician best known for his involvement with Felix Klein in the reform of the teaching of mathematics.

Made significant contributions to the field of algebraic geometry.
show full page

##### Paul Friedrich Wolfskehl (1856 – 1906)

German physician with an interest in mathematics.

He bequeathed $100\,000$ marks (equivalent to $£ 1\,000\,000$ pounds in $1997$ money) to the first person to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.

By the time the prize was finally awarded to Andrew John Wiles on $27$ June $1997$, the monetary value of the award had dwindled to $£30\,000$.
show full page

## Ernestine Duchies

##### Carl Anton Bretschneider (1808 – 1878)

German mathematician who worked in geometry, number theory, and history of geometry.

He also worked on logarithmic integrals and mathematical tables.

Probably the first mathematicians to use the symbol $\gamma$ for the Euler-Mascheroni constant, which he published in a paper of $1837$.
show full page

## Hanover

##### Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866)

Bernhard Riemann is most famous for the Riemann Hypothesis, which is (at time of writing, early 21st century) one of the most highly sought-after results in mathematics.
show full page

##### Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann (1852 – 1939)

German mathematician who made his mark by publishing a proof in $1882$ that $\pi$ is transcendental.
show full page

## Braunschweig

##### Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (1831 – 1916)

German mathematician, usually referred to as Richard Dedekind, who worked in the fields of abstract algebra, and algebraic number theory.

Most noted for his work on the foundations of the real numbers.

Used the thinking behind the resolution of Galileo's Paradox to underpin the definition of an infinite set.
show full page

## German Conferderation

##### Georges Pfeffermann (1838 – 1914)

German amateur mathematician who did a lot of work on magic squares and multiplicative magic squares.
show full page

##### Ernst Schröder (1841 – 1902)

Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Ernst Schröder (or Schroeder) was a German mathematician active mainly in the field of algebraic logic.

He is best known for his contribution to what is now known as the Cantor-Bernstein-Schröder Theorem.
show full page

##### Heinrich Martin Weber (1842 – 1913)

German mathematician who worked in algebra, number theory, analysis and applications of analysis to mathematical physics.

Formulated the ring axioms.
show full page

##### Max Noether (1844 – 1921)

German mathematician (also occasionally rendered Nöther) notable for his work in algebraic geometry and algebraic functions.

Father of Emmy Noether.
show full page

## Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

##### Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925)

German philosopher, logician, and mathematician, one of the founders of modern logic.

Made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics.
show full page

## Bremen

##### Carl David Tolmé Runge (1856 – 1927)

German mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist.

Best known as the co-developer (with Martin Wilhelm Kutta) of the Runge-Kutta Method in the field of numerical analysis.

Also known for his work on the Zeeman effect.

His work paved the way for the Thue-Siegel-Roth Theorem in the field of Diophantine equations.
show full page

## Lower Saxony

##### Adolf Hurwitz (1859 – 1919)

German mathematician who was an early master of the theory of Riemann surfaces.
show full page

## Kingdom of Württemberg

##### Otto Ludwig Hölder (1859 – 1937)

German mathematician most famous for his work in analysis (in particular Fourier series) and group theory.
show full page

## Silesia

##### Martin Wilhelm Kutta (1867 – 1944)

German mathematician best known for co-developing (with Carl David Tolmé Runge) of the Runge-Kutta Method in the field of numerical analysis.

Also known for the Zhukovsky-Kutta Aerofoil.
show full page

## German Empire

##### Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo (1871 – 1953)

German mathematician best known for his work on the foundations of mathematics.

Laid the groundwork (later to be enhanced by Abraham Fraenkel) for what are now known as the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of axiomatic set theory.
show full page

##### Fritz Emde (1873 – 1951)

German electronic engineer and high school teacher, best known for his co-authorship with Eugen Jahnke of Funktionentafeln mit Formeln und Kurven.
show full page

##### Heinrich Dörrie (1873 – 1955)

German teacher of mathematics and author of several specialist books.
show full page

##### Friedrich Moritz Hartogs (1874 – 1943)

Friedrich Hartogs (known to his associates as Fritz) was a German mathematician who made advances in set theory and complex analysis.

Killed himself as a result of the treatment he had received from the government of his country at the time.
show full page

##### Erhard Schmidt (1876 – 1959)

Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century.
show full page

##### Edmund Georg Hermann Landau (1877 – 1938)

German mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and complex analysis.
show full page

##### Georg Karl Wilhelm Hamel (1877 – 1954)

German mathematician with interests in mechanics, the foundations of mathematics and function theory.
show full page

##### Felix Bernstein (1878 – 1956)

German mathematician active mainly in the field of algebraic logic.

He is best known for his 1897 contribution to what is now known as the Cantor-Bernstein-Schröder Theorem.
show full page

##### Leopold Löwenheim (1878 – 1957)

German mathematician whose work pioneered the field of model theory.

Much of his unpublished work was lost when the British brutally bombed his house in 1943, an act of unforgivable barbarism for which the Brits have never delivered appropriate recompense.
show full page

##### Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

German-born mathematician and physicist. Probably the most famous scientist of all time.
show full page

##### Emmy Noether (1882 – 1935)

Amalie ("Emmy") Noether was a German-born mathematician who made considerable contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

Most famous for Noether's Theorem which makes the fundamental connection between symmetry and various laws of conservation.

Her philosophy and outlook were fundamental in the development of ideas that led to the establishment of the field of category theory.

Daughter of Max Noether.
show full page

##### Konrad Hermann Theodor Knopp (1882 – 1957)

German mathematician who worked on generalized limits and complex functions.
show full page

##### Arthur Josef Alwin Wieferich (1884 – 1954)

German mathematician who contributed briefly to the field of number theory before concentrating on a career in teaching.
show full page

##### Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl (1885 – 1955)

German mathematician who worked in the fields of mathematical logic and mathematical physics.
show full page

##### Ludwig Georg Elias Moses Bieberbach (1886 – 1982)

German mathematician working mostly in analysis.
show full page

##### Arthur Rosenthal (1887 – 1959)

German mathematician working in geometry, in particular the classification of regular polyhedra and Hilbert's axioms.

Also made contributions in analysis, including to Carathéodory's theory of measure.

With Michel Plancherel, made contributions in ergodic theory and dynamical systems.
show full page

##### Erich Hecke (1887 – 1947)

German mathematician working mainly in functional analysis.
show full page

##### Richard Courant (1888 – 1972)

German mathematician best known for his writings.

Made considerable contributions to the field numerical analysis.
show full page

##### William Richard Maximilian Hugo Threlfall (1888 – 1949)

William Threlfall was a German mathematician whose main work was in topology.

Collaborated extensively with Karl Johannes Herbert Seifert.
show full page

##### Abraham Halevi Fraenkel (1891 – 1965)

German-born Israeli Hungarian mathematician best known for his work on axiomatic set theory.

He improved Ernst Zermelo's axiomatic system, and out of that work came the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms.

He also wrote on topics in the history of mathematics.
show full page

##### Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970)

German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter.
show full page

##### Roland Percival Sprague (1894 – 1967)

German mathematician, known for the Sprague-Grundy Theorem and for being the first mathematician to find a perfect squared square.
show full page

##### Heinz Hopf (1894 – 1971)

German mathematician who worked on the fields of topology and geometry.
show full page

##### Wilhelm Friedrich Ackermann (1896 – 1962)

German mathematician, best known for the Ackermann function.
show full page

##### Ernst Paul Heinz Prüfer (1896 – 1934)

Heinz Prüfer was a German mathematician who worked on abelian groups, algebraic numbers, knot theory and Sturm-Liouville theory.

Provided an ingenious proof of Cayley's Formula.
show full page

##### Gregor Wentzel (1898 – 1978)

German physicist best known for development of quantum mechanics
show full page

##### Hellmuth Kneser (1898 – 1973)

German mathematician, who made notable contributions to group theory and topology.

Derived the theorem on the existence of a prime decomposition for 3-manifolds.

Originated the concept of a normal surface.
show full page

##### Helmut Hasse (1898 – 1979)

German mathematician who worked mainly in algebraic number theory and class field theory.
show full page

##### Karl Menninger (1898 – 1963)

German teacher of and writer about mathematics.
show full page

##### Wolfgang Krull (1899 – 1971)

Made significant contributions to many areas of commutative algebra.

Much of his work was influenced by Felix Klein and Emmy Noether.
show full page

##### Richard Dagobert Brauer (1901 – 1977)

German / American mathematician who worked mainly in abstract algebra.

Made important contributions to number theory.

Founder of modular representation theory.
show full page

##### Kurt Otto Friedrichs (1901 – 1982)

German applied mathematician whose major contribution was his work on partial differential equations.
show full page

##### Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901 – 1976)

German theoretical physicist who was one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics.
show full page

##### Oskar Morgenstern (1902 – 1977)

German-born economist notable for founding the field of game theory in collaboration with John von Neumann, and applying it to economics.
show full page

##### Camillo Herbert Grötzsch (1902 – 1993)

Herbert Grötzsch was a German mathematician working mainly in graph theory
show full page

##### Kurt Mahler (1903 – 1988)

German mathematician working mainly in analysis and number theory.

Proved the Prouhet-Thue-Morse constant and Champernowne constant to be transcendental.
show full page

##### Hans Lewy (1904 – 1988)

German born American mathematician, known for his work on partial differential equations and on the theory of functions of several complex variables.
show full page

##### Max August Zorn (1906 – 1993)

German-born American mathematician who worked in algebra, set theory and numerical analysis.

Best known for Zorn's Lemma, which he discovered in 1935. This is also known as the Kuratowski-Zorn Lemma, thereby acknowledging the work of Kazimierz Kuratowski who had published a version of it in 1922.
show full page

##### Karl Johannes Herbert Seifert (1907 – 1996)

German mathematician who worked mainly in topology and knot theory.

Collaborated extensively with William Threlfall.

One of the few who managed to weather the 2nd World War without upsetting either the Nazis or the Allies.
show full page

##### Theodore Samuel Motzkin (1908 – 1970)

German-born Israeli-American mathematician who was one of the pioneers of linear programming.

Also published in the fields of algebra, graph theory, approximation theory, combinatorics, numerical analysis, algebraic geometry and number theory.

Worked as a cryptographer for the British government during World War II.
show full page

##### Bernhard Hermann Neumann (1909 – 2002)

German-born mathematician who was one of the leaders in the field of group theory.

Husband of Hanna Neumann and father of Peter Michael Neumann.
show full page

##### Gerhard Gentzen (1909 – 1945)

Full name: Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen.

German mathematician and logician who made progress in symbolic logic.

Proved that the Peano axioms are consistent.
show full page

##### Fritz John (1910 – 1994)

German mathematician best known for his work on partial differential equations and ill-posed problems.
show full page

##### Lothar Collatz (1910 – 1990)

German mathematician best known for posing the Collatz Conjecture.
show full page

##### Helmut Wielandt (1910 – 2001)

German mathematician whose main work was in group theory, especially permutation groups.
show full page

##### Walter Ledermann (1911 – 2009)

German mathematician best known for his work in homology, group theory and number theory.
show full page

##### Theodor Schneider (1911 – 1988)

German mathematician best known for providing a proof of the Gelfond-Schneider Theorem.
show full page

##### Ernst Witt (1911 – 1991)

German mathematician working mainly in the field of quadratic forms and algebraic function fields.
show full page

##### Hans Julius Zassenhaus (1912 – 1991)

German mathematician who did significant work in abstract algebra, and also pioneered the science of computer algebra.
show full page

##### Karl Stein (1913 – 2000)

German mathematician well known for complex analysis and cryptography.
show full page

##### Paul Julius Oswald Teichmüller (1913 – 1943)

German mathematician who introduced quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into complex analysis.

Usually known as Oswald Teichmüller.
show full page

##### Hanna Neumann (1914 – 1971)

Full maiden name: Johanna von Caemmerer.

German-born mathematician active in the field of group theory.

Wife of Bernhard Hermann Neumann and mother of Peter Michael Neumann.
show full page

## Weimar Republic

##### Richard Friederich Arens (1919 – 2000)

German-born American mathematician who worked in the fields of functional analysis and topology.
show full page

##### Gerhard Ringel (1919 – 2008)

German mathematician who was one of the pioneers in the field of graph theory.
show full page

##### Gerd Edzard Harry Reuter (1921 – 1992)

Harry Reuter was a German-born mathematician who emigrated to Britain who worked mainly in the fields of probability theory and analysis.
show full page

##### Ernst Gabor Straus (1922 – 1983)

German-American mathematician who helped found the theories of Euclidean Ramsey theory and of the arithmetic properties of analytic functions.

Worked as the assistant to Albert Einstein.
show full page

##### Paul Moritz Cohn (1924 – 2006)

German-born mathematician renowned as an expert in abstract algebra, in particular non-commutative rings.
show full page

##### Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch (1927 – 2012)

German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry.
show full page

##### Alexander Grothendieck (1928 – 2014)

Sometimes rendered Alexandre Grothendieck.

German-born mathematician of semi-Ukrainian ancestry who is usually credited with creating the modern field of algebraic geometry.

His collaborative seminar-driven approach had the result of making him one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.
show full page

##### Wolfgang Haken (b. 1928 )

German mathematician mainly involved in topology where the bulk of his work has been on 3-dimensional manifolds.

In 1976, along with Kenneth Ira Appel, proved the Four Color Theorem with the help of a computer.
show full page

##### Robert John Aumann (b. 1930 )

German-born Israeli-American mathematician noted for his work on conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.
show full page

##### Reinhold Remmert (b. 1930 )

German mathematician whose work has mainly been in developing the theory of complex spaces.
show full page

##### Karl Heinrich Hofmann (b. 1932 )

German mathematician working in the fields of topological algebra and functional analysis, especially topological groups and semigroups and Lie theory.
show full page

##### Uta Caecilia Merzbach (b. 1933 )

German-born American historian of mathematics.
show full page

## 3rd Reich

##### Stefan Oscar Walter Hildebrandt (1936 – 2005)

German mathematician concerned mainly with the calculus of variations and nonlinear partial differential equations.
show full page

##### Bernd Fischer (b. 1936 )

German mathematician best known to his contributions to the classification of finite simple groups.

Discovered several of the sporadic groups:

Introduced 3-transposition groups
Constructed the three Fischer groups
Described the Baby Monster and computed its character table
Predicted the existence of the Fischer-Griess Monster.

##### Wilfrid Keller (b. 1937 )

German mathematician best known for his activity in number theory, including the hunt for titanic primes.
show full page

##### Peter Schreiber (b. 1938 )

German mathematician and historian of mathematics who deals with the foundations of mathematics and geometry.
show full page

##### Eberhard Freitag (b. 1942 )

German mathematician known for his work in function theory and modular forms.
show full page

## East Germany

##### Ingmar Lehmann (b. 1946 )

German mathematician, university lecturer and non-fiction author.
show full page

##### Gerd Rudolph (b. 1950 )

German mathematician and physicist specialising in gauge theory.
show full page

## West Germany

##### Gerd Faltings (b. 1954 )

German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic algebraic geometry.
show full page