Andreas Speiser (June 10, 1885 – October 12, 1970) was a
Swiss
Swiss most commonly refers to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Swiss may also refer to: Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
* Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
* Swiss Café, an old café located ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
and
philosopher of science
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
.
Life and work
Speiser studied in
Göttingen
Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...
, starting in 1904, notably with
David Hilbert
David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time.
Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...
,
Felix Klein
Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...
,
Hermann Minkowski
Hermann Minkowski (22 June 1864 – 12 January 1909) was a mathematician and professor at the University of Königsberg, the University of Zürich, and the University of Göttingen, described variously as German, Polish, Lithuanian-German, o ...
. In 1917 he became full-time professor at the
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...
but later relocated in Basel. During 1924/25 he was president of the Swiss Mathematical Association.
Speiser worked on number theory, group theory, and the theory of
Riemann surface
In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed vers ...
s. He organized the translation of
Leonard Dickson's seminal 1923 book ''Algebras and Their Arithmetics'' (''Algebren und ihre Zahlentheorie'', 1927), which was heavily influenced by the work on the theory of algebras done by the schools of
Emmy Noether
Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's theorem, Noether's first and Noether's second theorem, second theorems, which ...
and
Helmut Hasse
Helmut Hasse (; 25 August 1898 – 26 December 1979) was a German mathematician working in algebraic number theory, known for fundamental contributions to class field theory, the application of ''p''-adic numbers to local class field theory and ...
. Speiser also added an appendix on ideal theory to Dickson's book. Speiser's book ''Theorie der Gruppen endlicher Ordnung'' is a classic, richly illustrated work on group theory. In this book, there are group theoretical applications in Galois theory, elementary number theory, and Platonic solids, as well as extensive studies of ornaments, such as those that Speiser studied on a 1928 trip to Egypt.
Speiser also worked on the history of mathematics and was the chief editor for the
Euler Commission's edition of
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler ( ; ; ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential ...
's ''Opera Omnia'' and the editor of the works of
Johann Heinrich Lambert
Johann Heinrich Lambert (; ; 26 or 28 August 1728 – 25 September 1777) was a polymath from the Republic of Mulhouse, at that time allied to the Switzerland, Swiss Confederacy, who made important contributions to the subjects of mathematics, phys ...
. As a philosopher Speiser was chiefly concerned with
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
and wrote a commentary on the
Parmenides Dialogue, but he was also an expert of the philosophies of
Plotinus
Plotinus (; , ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius ...
and
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
.
Speiser's doctoral students include
J. J. Burckhardt.
Writings
*''Die Theorie der Gruppen von endlicher Ordnung – mit Anwendungen auf algebraische Zahlen und Gleichungen sowie auf die Kristallographie.'' Springer 1923 (1st edition), 1927 (2nd edition), 1937 (3rd edition); Birkhäuser 1956.
*''Klassische Stücke der Mathematik.'' Orell Füssli 1925 (mit Abdruck von Quellen, u.a. auch Dante, Rousseau).
*''Leonhard Euler und die Deutsche Philosophie.'' Orell Füssli 1934.
*''Leonhard Euler.'' In: ''Große Schweizer.'' Atlantis Verlag, Zürich 1939, 1940, S.1-6.
*''Die mathematische Denkweise.'' Rascher 1932,
Birkhäuser 1945, 1952.
*''Leonhard Euler. Vortrag gehalten an der Generalversammlung des S.I.A. in Basel am 11. September 1949''. Schweizerische Bauzeitung, Jg.67, Nr.48. 26. November 1949, Zürich.
*''Elemente der Philosophie und Mathematik.'' Birkhäuser 1952.
*''Die Geistige Arbeit.'' Birkhäuser 1955 (Vorträge).
*''Ein Parmenideskommentar – Studien zur Platonischen Dialektik.'' Koehler, Leipzig, Stuttgart, 1937, 1959.
''Ueber Riemannsche Flächen.''Comm.Math.Helvetici (CMH), Bd.2, 1930, S.284-293.
''Zur Theorie der Substitutionsgruppen.''Mathematische Annalen, Bd. 75, 1914, S.443-448.
''Zahlentheoretische Sätze aus der Gruppentheorie.''Math.Zeitschrift Bd.5, 1919, S. 1-6.
''Naturphilosophische Untersuchungen von Euler und Riemann.''Crelle Journal Bd. 157, 1927, S.105-114.
''Zahlentheorie in rationalen Algebren.''CMH, Bd.8, 1936, S.391-406.
''Riemann'sche Flächen vom hyperbolischen Typus.''CMH Bd.10, 1937, S.232-242.
''Geometrisches zur Riemannschen Zetafunktion.''Mathematische Annalen Bd.110, 1934, S.514-521.
''Einteilung der sämtlichen Werke Leonhard Eulers.''CMH Bd.20, 1947, S. 288-318.
See also
*
Hilbert–Speiser theorem
*
Jordan–Schur theorem
References
*
Martin Eichler
Martin Maximilian Emil Eichler (29 March 1912 – 7 October 1992) was a German number theorist.
Eichler received his Ph.D. from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1936.
Eichler and Goro Shimura developed a method to const ...
, Nachruf in den Verhandlungen der Schweizer Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Bd.150, 1970, S.325
*J. J. Burckhardt, Nachruf in Vierteljahresschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Bd.115, 1970, 471
*J. J. Burckhardt: ''Die Mathematik an der Universität Zurich 1916-1950 unter den Professoren R. Fueter, A. Speiser und P. Finsler'', Basel, 1980
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Speiser, Andreas
Swiss mathematicians
1885 births
1970 deaths
Philosophers of science
Swiss historians of mathematics