Karl Prachar

Karl Prachar ( born October 29, 1925 in Vienna, † November 27, 1994 ibid ) was an Austrian mathematician. He worked in the field of analytical number theory and is known for his book on distribution of primes.

Prachar was born in 1925 in Vienna. His parents had in the 16th district in the Thaliastrasse a Fahrrad-/Radiogeschäft, and also Prachar was a trained radio engineer. He studied at the Vienna University of mathematics and a doctorate in 1947 with the work about the square deviation of integer polynomials of the zero, which in 1894 followed on from the work of David Hilbert and a number theoretical background has. First, he was concerned with the geometry of numbers, which in Vienna, starting with work by Philipp Furtwängler and not least by his teacher Edmund Hlawka had a great tradition. In addition, he was also involved in the theory of infinite series, for example, in his 1950 habilitation About conditionally convergent vector series in Banach space, and with differential equations. At the University of Vienna, he was assistant to Hlawka.

From 1951 he worked almost exclusively in the field of analytical number theory, inspired by the work of Atle Selberg and Ivan Matveyitch Vinogradov. In 1957, he wrote the important standard work distribution of prime numbers.

Since 1960 he was a full professor of mathematics at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Vienna.

In 1993 he received the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st class.

In 1994, he died in Vienna by suicide. His grave is located in Vienna on the Ottakringerstraße Cemetery ( Gallitzinstraße 5, group 22 grave number 1A).