Axel Thue

Axel Thue ( born February 19, 1863 in Tønsberg, Norway, † March 7, 1922 in Oslo) was a Norwegian mathematician known for his contributions in combinatorics and his work on the theory of numbers ( Diophantine approximations Diophantine equations).

Life and work

Thue in Oslo went to school and studied from 1883 to 1889 at the University of Oslo, especially physics and mathematics. In 1889 he received his doctorate in Oslo in Elling Holst. In 1890 he continued his studies in Leipzig with Sophus Lie and in Berlin, where he attended lectures by Hermann von Helmholtz, Leopold Kronecker and Lazarus Fuchs. In 1891 he returned to Oslo, where he received a scholarship to do research in mathematical terms. In 1894 he married and began to teach at the predecessor of the Institute of Technology in Trondheim. In 1903 he became Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Oslo.

In 1909 he proved a theorem, which later by the extensions of Carl Ludwig Siegel (1920 ) and Klaus Roth ( 1958), the set of Thue -Siegel - Roth.

In 1910 he introduced the word problem for term rewriting systems. 1914 appeared to be subsequent work, in which he brought the word problem or Thue problem with the halting problem in context. While the first work was in 1910 hardly noticed the work of 1914 was taken up, for example, Emil Post, who showed in 1947 the undecidability of Thue 's word substitution problem. As a result, Thue systems and semi-Thue systems were named after Thue.

His only known graduate student Albert Thoralf Skolem was.

Writings

• T. Nagel, Atle Selberg, S. Selberg, K. Thalberg (Editor ): Selected Mathematical Papers of Axel Thue, Oslo, Universitetsforlaget 1977