- Leopold Kronecker
Infobox_Scientist
name = Leopold Kronecker
caption = Leopold Kronecker
birth_date = birth date|1823|12|7|mf=y
birth_place =Liegnitz ,Prussia nprovince of Silesia
residence =Prussia n
nationality =Prussia n
death_date = death date and age|1891|12|29|1823|12|7
death_place =Berlin ,Germany
field =Mathematics
work_institution =Humboldt University Berlin
alma_mater =University of Berlin
doctoral_advisor =Johann Encke Gustav Dirichlet
doctoral_students =Georg Cantor Kurt Hensel Adolf Kneser Mathias Lerch Franz Mertens
known_for =Kronecker delta Kronecker product Kronecker-Weber theorem Kronecker's theorem Kronecker's lemma
prizes =
footnotes =Leopold Kronecker (
December 7 ,1823 –December 29 ,1891 ) was a Germanmathematician andlogician who argued thatarithmetic and analysis must be founded on "whole numbers", saying, "God made theintegers ; all else is the work of man" (Bell 1986, p. 477). This put Kronecker in bitter opposition to some of the mathematical extensions ofGeorg Cantor , Kronecker's student (cf. Davis (2000), pp. 59ff). Kronecker was a student and lifelong friend ofErnst Kummer .Biography
Leopold Kronecker was born in
Liegnitz ,Prussia (now Legnica,Poland ) into aJewish family [ [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kronecker.html Leopold Kronecker] ] . In 1845, Kronecker wrote his dissertation at theUniversity of Berlin onnumber theory , giving special formulation to units in certainalgebraic number fields .Peter Gustav Dirichlet was his teacher.After obtaining his degree, Kronecker managed the estate and business of his uncle, producing nothing mathematical for eight years. In his 1853 memoir on the algebraic solvability of equations, Kronecker extended the work of
Évariste Galois on thetheory of equations . He accepted a professorship at "Friedrich-Wilhelms" University (today:Humboldt University ) of Berlin in 1883.Kronecker also contributed to the concept of continuity, reconstructing the form of
irrational number s inreal number s. In analysis, Kronecker rejected the formulation of acontinuous, nowhere differentiable function by his colleague,Karl Weierstrass . In an 1850 paper, "On the Solution of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree", Kronecker solved thequintic equation by applyinggroup theory .Kronecker's
finitism made him a forerunner ofintuitionism infoundations of mathematics .Named for Kronecker are theKronecker limit formula ,Kronecker delta ,Kronecker product ,Kronecker-Weber theorem ,Kronecker's theorem in number theory, andKronecker's lemma . He was the supervisor ofKurt Hensel ,Adolf Kneser ,Mathias Lerch , andFranz Mertens , amongst others.Kronecker died on
December 29 ,1891 inBerlin . He is buried in the "Alter St Matthäus Kirchhof" Cemetery inBerlin -Schöneberg , close toGustav Kirchhoff .Bibliography
Primary:
* 1887. "On the concept of number" in Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. "From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics", 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press: 947-55.
*Jean van Heijenoort (1967), From Frege to Godel: A source Book in Mathematical Logic. 1879-1931, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. ISBN 0-674-32449-8 (pbk.)Secondary:
*Eric Temple Bell , 1986. "Men of Mathematics", Simon and Schuster, New York.
*Martin Davis (2000), "Engines of Logic, Mathematicians and the origin of the Computer", W.W. Norton & Company, New York. ISBN 0-393-32229-7 pbk.References
External links
*
*
* [http://www.math.uvsq.fr/~lecerf/software/kronecker/index.html A Polynomial Equation System Solver] based on the Kronecker Method.Persondata
NAME= Kronecker, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= GermanMathematician
DATE OF BIRTH=December 7 ,1823
PLACE OF BIRTH=Liegnitz ,Prussia
DATE OF DEATH=December 29 ,1891
PLACE OF DEATH=Berlin ,Germany
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