Kenjiro Shoda

Kenjiro Shoda (Japanese正 田 建 次郎; born February 25, 1902 in Tatebayashi, Gumma Prefecture, Empire of Japan, † March 20, 1977 in Ashikaga ) was a Japanese mathematician who dealt with algebra.

Shoda went to school in Tokyo and Nagoya on the eighth national high school. He then studied at the University of Tokyo in particular with Teiji Takagi. In 1925 he received his degree, worked on representation theory of groups and continued his studies in Berlin with Isay Schur and in Göttingen at Emmy Noether. In 1929 he returned to Japan and wrote an influential in Japan algebra textbook ( Abstract Algebra ), which first appeared in 1932 and in the 12th edition in 1971. It spread the ideas of the Noether school ( in the West spread in particular by the textbook by Bartel Leendert van der Waerden found ) in Japan.

In 1933 he became a professor at the University of Osaka. After the Second World War he was involved as Chairman of the Japanese Mathematical Society ( 1946 ) on the reconstruction of mathematics. In 1947 his book General Algebra. In 1949 he became Dean of the Faculty of Science, Osaka University, and from 1954 to 1960 he was president of the university. During this time he established an engineering school in Osaka and in 1961 was its first dean. Even after his retirement, he was active in an advisory capacity for the improvement of university education and was president of the Musashi University. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack on a family trip to the Plum Blossom by Ashikaga.

In 1949 he was awarded the Japan Academy of Sciences, in 1953 he became a member of the Academy. In 1969 he received the Order of Culture.

His doctoral Yozo Matsushima heard.

He was married twice. From his first marriage with the daughter of the astronomer Hirayama Shin (1868-1945) he had a son and two daughters from his second marriage after the death of his first wife a son. The Empress Michiko is one of his nieces.