Walter Feit

Walter Feit (born 26 October 1930 in Vienna, † 29 July 2004 in Branford, Connecticut) was an American mathematician who worked on group theory.

Feit 1939 fled from Vienna to England - his parents put him ( his parents died in the Holocaust ) in the last train with Jewish children, who left Austria. During the war he went to school in Oxford, where he won a scholarship in 1943. In 1946 he went to the USA where he lived with an uncle in Miami. He began his studies at the University of Chicago, where in 1950 he received his master's degree. Then he went to the University of Michigan to the then leading group theorists Richard Brauer. When he went to Harvard, he heard with Jean Dieudonné, but corresponded further with brewer. In 1955 he was at Walter Thrall at the University of Michigan PhD (Topics in the theory of group characters). In 1953 he was an instructor at Cornell University, where he was also a professor. From 1964 he was a professor at Yale University, where he was also Chairman of the Department. In 2003 he retired.

Feit dealt with the theory of finite groups and representation theory (theory of the characters, modular representation theory of Brauer ). His most famous result is the monumental evidence with John Griggs Thompson (with whom he from 1959 worked at the University of Chicago) of 1963 on the solvability of all finite groups of odd order (On solvability of groups of odd order. Pacific Journal of Mathematics ). The work was essential to the classification program of the finite simple groups. Feit also worked with Graham Higman 1964 on generalized polygons.

In 1965 he received the Cole prize in algebra. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Feit was also once vice-president of the International Mathematical Union. In 1970 he gave a plenary lecture at the ICM in Nice (The current situation in the theory of finite simple groups).

His son Paul Feit is Professor of Mathematics.

His doctoral counts Ronald Solomon, who also played a leading role in the classification of finite simple groups program.

Writings

  • The representation theory of finite groups. North Holland 1982, ISBN 0-444-86155-6
  • Characters of finite groups. New York, Benjamin 1967
October 26 July 29 Branford (Connecticut)
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