Adolf Kneser

Adolf Kneser ( born March 19, 1862 in Grüssow, Mecklenburg, † January 24, 1930 in Breslau) was a German mathematician who algebraic geometry and calculus devoted himself.

Life and work

Kneser was the son of Protestant pastor Hermann Adolf Kneser. After he had lost his father early, he grew up in Rostock. His godfather was the physicist Johann Christian Poggendorff. After that he went to the University of Rostock, where he published his first work on acoustics. At the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin, he heard Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. Out at the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg, he received his doctorate in 1884 in Berlin with a thesis at Ernst Eduard Kummer and Kronecker Dr. phil ..

He habilitated at the University of Marburg. After a stopover in Breslau he came in 1889 as ao Professor at the then Russian University of Dorpat, which called him the following year as a Full Professor of Applied Mathematics. In 1900 he moved to the Mining Academy in Berlin and 1905 in the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau. He was elected its rector for the academic year 1911/12. In Breslau he remained until his retirement.

Kneser dealt initially with algebraic functions, elliptic functions and space curves. Later he worked on the Sturm-Liouville problem in the theory of linear ordinary differential equations, integral equations and calculus of variations (theory of the second variation, solution of Mayer's problem). His textbook calculus of variations appeared in 1900 and his Integral equations and their applications in mathematical physics in 1911, in which he detailed the just developed by David Hilbert theory.

Kneser was also interested in philosophy and history of science. He published in 1924 Hobbes and the political philosophy and 1928, the principle of least action Leibniz to the present.

Kneser was married to Laura Booth since 1894 and had four sons. His son Hellmuth Kneser and his son Martin Kneser were also known mathematician.

His correspondence with Vladimir Steklov appeared in Moscow in 1980 at Nauka.

In 1929 he was president of the German Mathematical Society.