Jérôme Franel

Jérôme Franel ( born November 29, 1859 in Travers NE ( citizens of Provence VD), † November 21, 1939 in Zurich ) was a Swiss mathematician.

Life and work

Jérôme Franel grew up in Travers and had twelve brothers and sisters. He studied mathematics and physics at the Ecole Industrielle in Lausanne and ETH Zurich, in Berlin ( under Karl Weierstrass, Ernst Eduard Kummer, Leopold Kronecker ) and in Paris ( with Charles Hermite ). In 1883 he received the degree in mathematics in Paris. He then taught for two years at the Ecole Industrielle in Lausanne, before he started in 1886 to teach at the ETH Zurich on the French Mathematics Chair.

In 1897 he was one of the organizers of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich. He read it also the presentation of the event due to illness Henri Poincaré. 1905 to 1909 he was President of ETH Zurich and provided for a reorganization that made independent of the University of Zurich. In particular, it was on his initiative, in 1908 the right to award doctorates (which was previously reserved for the University of Zurich ). Franel taught until 1929 at the ETH.

In 1905 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich and an honorary citizen of Zurich.

He was regarded by George Pólya as a good teacher at the ETH and was popular. However, he was interested in after Polya especially of French literature and hardly for mathematical research. He held for decades the introductory lectures in Analysis in French at the ETH. Only when he approached retirement, he began to get to grips with the Fermatvermutung and the Riemann Hypothesis. Today he is known especially with the proof of the equivalence of the Riemann conjecture a theorem on Farey series. The Agitated ( also in 1924 ) Edmund Landau to a series of working on and was later subject of research. ( the equivalent 1924 found by Landau to an elementary theorem on Fareyreihen discovered Charles Pisot 1960 again). George Polya reported Franel had presented him and his friend with Franel mathematician Louis Kollros about his proof strategy for the Riemann Hypothesis. As Polya would have explained a location closer he said after a long silence minute: Yes, there is the error.