Theodor Molien
Theodor Georg Andreas Molien (born 29 Augustjul / September 10 1861greg in Riga, .. † December 25, 1941 in Tomsk, Russia ) was a Baltic German mathematician who dealt with algebra. He is best known for the first classification theorem for algebras over the complex numbers.
Life and work
Theodor Molien was the son of a school teacher in Riga and studied from 1880 at the University of Dorpat ( now Tartu ) Astronomy Anders Lindstedt. In 1883 he wrote his candidate thesis in astronomy (On the path of the comet 1880 III. Astronomical Society Vol 105). In the same year he went to Leipzig, where he, Carl Gottfried Neumann, Eduard Study, Wilhelm Killing heard Felix Klein. There, encouraged him to write his thesis on small ( about linear transformations of elliptic functions). 1885 was his final work at Dorpat, where he followed for 15 years was a lecturer (there was only one professorship, and was busy). He spent the summer in the 1880s, often at universities in Germany.
1891 appeared in Mathematische Annalen his best-known work using systems of higher complex numbers, with which he was awarded his doctorate in 1892 in Dorpat. In it he proved a classification theorem for extensions of complex number systems, more precisely the semisimple algebras over the complex numbers ( ie in which even the associative law, but not necessarily the commutative property of multiplication applies ). Later Élie Cartan classified the semisimple algebras over the real numbers, and 1907 classified Joseph Wedderburn the semisimple algebras over arbitrary fields. Molien proved, among other things, that each associative simple algebra over the field of complex numbers isormoph is a matrix algebra over the complex numbers. In 1892 he was taken for this work in the Moscow Mathematical Society, and in 1894 he received a gold medal for France. Also in Germany, the importance of mathematicians such as Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Adolf Hurwitz, with whom he corresponded, immediately detected. In 1900 he became a professor in Tomsk in Siberia, where he was scientifically isolated, a mathematical library built and was the first professor of mathematics in Siberia organized the lessons, which he partly wrote the textbooks themselves. In 1913 he had to because of its known liberal political views resign and taught at a secondary school for women, but was in 1917 professor.
In addition to his work on hypercomplex number systems, he also worked, following Frobenius, over polynomial invariants of finite groups. Among other things he showed in 1898, the decomposition of representations of finite groups in the vector space of polynomials in variables over the complex numbers into irreducible representations.
Theodor Molien spoke or read thirteen languages ( in addition to German, Estonian, Russian and French, English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian).
In the 1890s, he was considered one of the strongest chess players Dorpat and was president of the local chess club. In a simultaneous game against former World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz he just missed the draw. 1897 completed a two years earlier begun by Andreas Ascharin investigation into the endgame rook against bishop. He calculated the total number of positions this ending to over 12 million and the profit positions thereof to about 100 000 At this time some of his chess studies published on this topic.