Max August Zorn

Max August Zorn ( born June 6, 1906 in Krefeld, † 9 March 1993 in Bloomington, Indiana, USA) was an American professor of mathematics German descent.

Zorn studied at the University of Hamburg, where he met with his thesis on the " theory of alternative rings " doctorate by Emil Artin in April 1930. His dissertation excited universal admiration, and he was honored with a university price. His first job he took at the University of Halle as a research assistant. In 1933 he decided to leave Germany because of the Nazi policy, because he had, among other things, 1929 in Hamburg for a socialist candidate list for the ASTA elections.

Anger emigrated to the USA and in 1934 received an appointment at Yale University, where he worked until 1936. Then he went to the University of California ( UCLA), Los Angeles, where he remained until 1946. During this time, was one of his students, Israel Nathan Herstein, later himself a mathematician of distinction. He then became a professor at Indiana University, where he became professor emeritus in 1971.

Max Zorn married Alice Schlottau, with whom he had a son and a daughter, Jens and Liz.

Zorn worked in various fields of mathematics. His publications were, inter alia, on issues of algebra, set theory, group theory and the real and complex analysis. Wrath most important contribution to modern mathematics is the so-called Lemma of Zorn, a selection of the axiom of Zermelo -Fraenkel set theory equivalent sentence. With his help, it can be shown, for example, that every vector space has a basis. By Zorn's lemma proofs have been simplified, which were previously performed only with the well-ordering theorem.