Winfried Scharlau (12 August 1940, in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 26 November 2020) was a German mathematician.

Biography

Scharlau received his doctorate in 1967 from the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

. His doctoral thesis ''Quadratische Formen und Galois-Cohomologie'' (Quadratic Forms and Galois Cohomology) was supervised by

Friedrich Hirzebruch Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as ...

. Scharlau was at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

for the academic year 1969–1970 and in spring 1972. From 1970 he was a professor (most recently ''Institutsdirektor'') at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over ...

, where he has now retired. Scharlau's research deals with

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

and, in particular, the theory of quadratic forms, about which he wrote a 1985 monograph ''Quadratic and Hermitian Forms'' in Springer's series ''Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften''. Scharlau was also an amateur

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

and author of two novels, ''I megali istoria - die große Geschichte'' (2nd edition 2001), set on the Greek island of

Naxos Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best abr ...

, and '' Scharife '' (2001), set on the island of

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

in the 19th century. He also deals with the

history of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...

and wrote, with Hans Opolka, a historically-oriented introduction to number theory. Their book presents, among other topics, the analytical class number formula of

Dirichlet Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (; 13 February 1805 – 5 May 1859) was a German mathematician who made deep contributions to number theory (including creating the field of analytic number theory), and to the theory of Fourier series and ...

and the geometry of the numbers in the 19th century. Scharlau wrote a multi-part biography of Alexander Grothendieck. Scharlau was a corresponding member of the

Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Göttingen Academy of Sciences (german: Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen)Note that the German ''Wissenschaft'' has a wider meaning than the English "Science", and includes Social sciences and Humanities. is the second oldest of the se ...

. From 1991 to 1992 he was president of the

German Mathematical Society The German Mathematical Society (german: Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung, DMV) is the main professional society of German mathematicians and represents German mathematics within the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the International Mathe ...

. In 1974 he was invited speaker with talk ''On subspaces of inner product spaces'' at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

. He was the father of the cognitive psychologist Ingrid Scharlau.

Selected publications

* with Friedrich Hirzebruch: ''Einführung in die Funktionalanalysis'', BI, Mannheim 1971,
''Hirzebruch Collection''
(PDF) * * with H.-G. Quebbemann and Manfred Schultz
''Quadratic and Hermitian forms in additive and abelian categories''
Journal of Algebra vol. 59, no. 2, 264-289 1979 * with Manfred Knebusch
''Algebraic theory of quadratic forms: generic methods and Pfister forms''
vol. 1. Birkhäuser, 1980 (DMV Seminary, notes taken by Heisook Lee) * with Hans Opolka: ''Von Fermat bis Minkowski. Eine Vorlesung über die Zahlentheorie und ihre Entwicklung''. Springer, Berlin 1980 * ''Richard Dedekind 1831/1981''. Vieweg, Braunschweig 'et alia loca''1981 * ''Quadratic and Hermitian Forms''. Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 270. Springer, Berlin 'et alia loca''1985 * ''Mathematische Institute in Deutschland 1800–1945''. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Mathematik. Vieweg, Braunschweig 'et alia loca''1990 * ''Schulwissen Mathematik. Ein Überblick''. Vieweg, Braunschweig 'et alia loca''1994 * ''Beiträge zur Vogelwelt der südlichen Ägäis''. Verlag C. Lienau, 1999 * * ''Mathematik für Naturwissenschaftler''.

LIT Verlag LIT Verlag is a German academic publisher founded in 1980. Its managing director is Wilhelm Hopf. Its principal place of publication is Münster; further publishing offices are located in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, London, Zurich, and New York Ci ...

, Münster 2005 * * *

References

External links

*
website at the University of Münster
* https://www.trauer.ms/traueranzeige/winfried-scharlau-2020-11-26-havixbeck-9312841 {{DEFAULTSORT:Scharlau, Winfried 1940 births 2020 deaths Algebraists 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of the University of Münster