Theodor Schneider

Theodor Schneider ( born May 7, 1911 in Frankfurt am Main, † October 31, 1988 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German mathematician who is known in particular for his proof of the theorem of Gelfond -Schneider. This theorem gives sufficient conditions to ensure that a power irrational exponent is a transcendental number.

Life

Theodor Schneider studied from 1929 to 1934 in Frankfurt am Main and broke in his dissertation in 1934 at Carl Ludwig Siegel, the seventh Hilbert problem which has since been known as Gelfond -Schneider theorem of, according to him, Alexander Gelfond, who solved it simultaneously. Hilbert himself placed this issue in its difficulty even on Fermat's Last Theorem and Riemann Hypothesis. In 1935 he was adjunct assistant professor at the University of Frankfurt, for political unreliability him, however, the habilitation was denied (he was indeed become SA member to get even a job at the university, but did not visit the prescribed political events). He went on as an assistant (from 1939) by Carl Ludwig Siegel to Göttingen, where he habilitated in 1939 and, apart from an interruption by military service from 1940 to 1945 in the weather service, remained until 1953. In 1945 he became assistant and lecturer at Göttingen and in 1951 senior assistant. 1947/48 he held a Chair in Münster ( Westphalia). From 1953 to 1959 he was a professor in Erlangen and finally from 1959 until his retirement in 1976 Professor in Freiburg. At the beginning of his time in Freiburg, he was from 1959 to 1963 director of the Mathematical Research Institute Oberwolfach.

From 1970 he was a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. In 1984 he received the Golden doctoral certificate in Frankfurt.

Works

• Introduction to the theory of transcendental numbers, Springer, 1957 ( French translation 1959)
• Transcendence investigations of periodic functions, part 1.2, Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Bd.172, 1934, pp. 65-69, 70-74, online: Part 1, Part 2 ( his dissertation, in which he described the seventh Hilbert conjecture solved )