Alwin Korselt
Alwin Reinhold Korselt ( born March 17, 1864 in Mittelherwigsdorf; † February 4, 1947 in Plauen ) was a German mathematician.
Life and work
From 1876 to 1885 Korselt attended high school in Zittau, then he studied until 1890 in Leipzig mathematics and physics (as well as 1886 a semester in Freiburg im Breisgau). In Leipzig he heard, for example, lectures of Felix Klein, Isay Schur, Eduard Study, Sophus Lie and Friedrich Engel.
After the clerkship at the Nikolai Gymnasium in Leipzig he taught from 1891 to 1898 in schools in Pirna, Dresden, Keilhau, Lobau and Meerane. His first scientific publication was in 1893 an extensive, two-part meeting ( Remarks on the algebra of logic) of the lectures of Ernst Schröder. From 1898 until his retirement in 1924 he taught at a secondary school (later secondary school ) in Plauen.
The reviewers of his dissertation in 1902 at the University of Leipzig were Otto Hölder and Carl Gottfried Neumann. It deals with geometric designs in which in addition to compass and straightedge, the n- division is allowed of angles. Shortly thereafter, he was involved in a controversy with Gottlob Frege on Hilbert's system of axioms of Euclidean geometry in which he stood on the Hilbert page. Be set of Korselt, the Carmichael numbers comes characterized ( a family of pseudo- primes ) from the year 1899. Korselt corresponded with, among others, Alfred Pringsheim, David Hilbert, Helmut Hasse, Bertrand Russell, Constantin Carathéodory and Abraham Fraenkel, he also repeatedly visited in Marburg.
Korselt was not married, and there he spent the majority of his income on books and cigars, he was often dressed carelessly. In the 30 years of his legs was amputated. He remained scientifically active until about 1939, died in 1947 in Plauen and was buried in Mittelherwigsdorf.
After Korselt the Korselt numbers were named ( a composite squarefree number n is called a- Korselt number, if for each of its prime factor p that n - a is divisible by p - a; 1- Korselt numbers are the Carmichael numbers).
Writings
- Dissertation: On the possibility of solving strange triangle tasks angular pitch, 67 pages, Leipzig, 1901
- On the foundations of geometry, Annual Report of the German Mathematical Society 12, 402-407, 1903, online
Literature and links
- Entry in the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Lothar Kreiser: The listener Frege and his correspondents Alwin Korselt, Wittgenstein Studies 2, 1995