Arthur Moritz Schoenflies

Arthur Moritz Schoenflies ( born April 17, 1853 in Landsberg on the Warta River, now Gorzów, Poland, † May 27, 1928 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a mathematician and was known for his contribution to crystallography.

Life

Arthur Schoenflies came from a German - Jewish family. His wife was Emma Levin, whose sister, the writer Julie, was married to the publisher Julius Levin. Emma and Arthur had five children, two of whom were murdered in the Holocaust. To his family, among other things include Walter Benjamin, Gertrud Kolmar and Gustav Hirschfeld ( → Family Schoenflies and Hirschfeld ).

Schoenflies studied under Kummer and Weierstrass at the University of Berlin from 1870 to 1875. He received his doctorate in 1877, began to teach as a teacher in Berlin and completed his habilitation in 1884. 1891 he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Applied Mathematics in Göttingen. In 1899 he became professor at the University of Königsberg, and in 1911 became professor at the Academy of Social and Commercial Sciences in Frankfurt. Schoenflies finished his career in 1922 as Rector of the University of Frankfurt, whose founder he was. He was a member of the Leopoldina in Halle, of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, honorary member of the German scientists Association and one of the founding fathers of the German Mathematical Society.

1891 pointed Schoenflies after due to a reference from Felix Klein and at the same time Jewgraf Stepanovich Fyodorov, that it is not more and not less than 230 space groups of symmetries of the crystal structures are group theory. He had created an indispensable basis for the description of the variety of crystal structures, see Schoenflies symbolism.

Other key findings related to the analysis and set theory Georg Cantor that characterize the concept of accessibility and the set of Schoenflies. The considerations of Schoenflies to set theory and elementary topology played in the discussions of his time a role, but were overtaken by the work of Luitzen Brouwer and Felix Hausdorff. Schoenflies starred with Walther Nernst at a standard work of that time instrumental with, the textbook to introduce scientists and engineers in the mathematical treatment of the natural sciences (Introduction to the mathematical treatment of natural science. 1895).

In 1922 he was president of the German Mathematical Society.

Writings

• Introduction to the mathematical treatment of natural science. 1st edition, Dr. E. Wolff, 1895; 11th edition 1931 ( together with Walther Nernst )
• Development of set theory and its applications. Teubner, 1913 (together with Hans Hahn ).
• Theory of crystal structure. A textbook. Gebr Borntraeger, 1923.