Kurt Hensel
Kurt Hensel ( born December 29, 1861 in Königsberg; † 1 June 1941 in Marburg ) was a German mathematician. He introduced the concept of p- adic numbers in number theory. According to him, the Henselsche Lemma and the Henselsche ring are named.
Life
Kurt Hensel was the fourth child of the East Prussian landowner Sebastian Hensel and his wife Julie. The paternal grandparents were composer Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn was born and the painter Wilhelm Hensel in Berlin. Sebastian Hensel grew after the death of his mother on was the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, who was married to the sister of Fanny Hensel. About the Hensel grandmother was related to the Mendelssohn family, he was the great-nephew of Rebecca, Paul and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and great-grandson of Moses Mendelssohn. His childhood was spent Hensel initially at the family estate near Konigsberg. When he was nine years old, the family moved to Berlin, where his father had taken a job as director of a construction company after the sale of the goods.
After successful graduation at Berlin's Friedrich- Wilhelm-Gymnasium, he studied the first three semesters alternately at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, but then remained for the rest of the studies in Berlin. There he was a student of Rudolf Lipschitz, Karl Weierstrass, Karl Wilhelm Borchardt, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz and especially Leopold Kronecker, who promoted him and in which he received his doctorate in 1884 on Arithmetic studies of discriminants and their nonessential divider. After graduation, he went first as a one-year volunteer for the military to habilitate in 1886 Kronecker. Subsequently, he was a lecturer in Berlin, was appointed extraordinary professor there in 1901 and eventually appointed to a professorship at the University of Marburg. Despite several appeals to other universities he remained until his death in Marburg.
1887 Hensel married Gertrud Hahn, a daughter of the industrialist Albert Hahn and aunt of the reform educationalist Kurt Hahn, which he was related by marriage with Ernst Julius Remak. The marriage produced four daughters were born: Ruth (* 1888), Lili (* 1889), Marie ( * 1890) and Charlotte (* 1896), and a son, the lawyer Albert Hensel. Charlotte later married the author Werner Berggruen.
Kurt Hensel in 1930 emeritus. After he had taken some time at the University of operation, he spent his last years retired and died on June 1, 1941 of a heart attack. A year later sold his daughter more than a hundred books from his mathematical library of the Reich University of Strasbourg.
In 1931 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo. In 1917 he was president of the German Mathematical Society.
Work
Hensel is known for its introduction of the p- adic numbers in number theory, where his pupil Helmut Hasse with its local-global principle created a central role in number theory. The first time the concept of p- adic numbers in a more general form - In his work over a new justification of the theory of algebraic numbers in the annual report of the German Mathematical Society in 1899, he represents - after two more specialized work in 1897. Hensel was also in the theory of function fields, a pioneer, what he wrote a book with Georg Landsberg.
From 1884 to 1937 Hensel published 78 articles in various journals, mainly on topics in the field of number theory.
In addition, he edited the collected works and lectures of his teacher Kronecker in the years 1895-1903 and 1929/1930. He was also from 1903 to 1936 editor of the then most prestigious mathematical journal, the Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Writings
- Theory of algebraic functions of one variables and its application to algebraic curves and abelian integrals (together with Georg Landsberg) Teubner, Leipzig 1902
- Theory of algebraic numbers ibid. 1908
- Number Theory Goschen, Berlin 1913
- Commemorative speech on Ernst Eduard Kummer to his 100th birthday
- About a new justification of the theory of algebraic numbers, annual report, DMV, Volume 6, 1899