Mathematician:Max August Zorn

Mathematician

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.

Nationality

German-born American

History

• Born: June 6, 1906 in Krefeld, Germany
• Died: March 9, 1993 in Bloomington, Indiana, United States

Theorems and Definitions

• Artin-Zorn Theorem (with Emil Artin)
• Zorn's Lemma, also known as Kuratowski-Zorn Lemma (independently of Kazimierz Kuratowski)

Results named for Max August Zorn can be found here.

Publications

• 1935: A remark on method in transfinite algebra (Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 41: pp. 667 – 670) (in which Zorn's Lemma is presented)
• 1941: Alternative rings and related questions I: existence of the radical
• 1944: Idempotency of infinite cardinals
• 1945: Characterization of analytic functions in Banach space

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Max August Zorn": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive