Erhard Schmidt

Erhard Schmidt (courtesy MFO)

Born| (1876-01-13)13 January 1876

Tartu, Governorate of Livonia (now Estonia)

Died| 6 December 1959(1959-12-06) (aged 83)

Berlin

Alma mater| University of Göttingen
Known for| Schmidt decomposition
Gram–Schmidt process
Hilbert–Schmidt operator
Hilbert–Schmidt integral operator
Singular value
Scientific career
Fields| Mathematics
Thesis| Entwickelung willkürlicher Functionen nach Systemen vorgeschriebener (1905)
Doctoral advisor| David Hilbert[1]
Doctoral students| Salomon Bochner
Alfred Brauer
Richard Brauer
Lothar Collatz
Alexander Dinghas
Michael Golomb
Guido Hoheisel
Eberhard Hopf
Heinz Hopf
Martin Kneser
Wilhelm Specht

Erhard Schmidt (13 January 1876 – 6 December 1959) was a Baltic German mathematician whose work significantly influenced the direction of mathematics in the twentieth century.[2] Schmidt was born in Tartu (German: Dorpat), in the Governorate of Livonia (now Estonia).

## Contents

* 1 Mathematics
* 2 National Socialism
* 3 See also
* 4 Notes
* 5 References

## Mathematics

His advisor was David Hilbert[1] and he was awarded his doctorate from University of Göttingen in 1905. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Entwickelung willkürlicher Funktionen nach Systemen vorgeschriebener and was a work on integral equations.[1] Together with David Hilbert he made important contributions to functional analysis. Ernst Zermelo credited conversations with Schmidt for the idea and method for his classic 1904 proof of the Well-ordering theorem from an "Axiom of choice", which has become an integral part of modern set theory.[3]

After the war, in 1948, Schmidt founded and became the first editor-in-chief of the journal Mathematische Nachrichten.[2]

## National Socialism

During World War II Schmidt held positions of authority at the University of Berlin and had to carry out various Nazi resolutions against the Jews—a job that he apparently did not do well, since he was criticized at one point for not understanding the "Jewish question". At the celebration of Schmidt's 75th birthday in 1951 a prominent Jewish mathematician, Hans Freudenthal, who had survived the Nazi years, spoke of the difficulties that Schmidt faced during that period without criticism.[2] Schmidt was, however, a conservative and a nationalist, and, in 1938, defended Hitler after Kristallnacht, telling Jewish mathematician Issai Schur: "Suppose we had to fight a war to rearm Germany, unite with Austria, liberate the Saar and the German part of Czechoslovakia. Such a war would have cost us half a million young men. But everybody would have admired our victorious leader. Now, Hitler has sacrificed half a million Jews and has achieved great things for Germany. I hope some day you will be recompensed but I am still grateful to Hitler".[4]

## See also

* Chebyshev function
* Isoperimetric inequality
* Low-rank approximation
* List of Baltic German scientists

## Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Erhard Schmidt at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Erhard Schmidt", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schmidt.html .
3. ↑ Zermelo 1904, pp. 514, 516.
4. ↑ Segal, Sanford L. (2003) (in en). Mathematicians Under the Nazis. Princeton University Press. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-691-00451-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=Xa8CNCyohBQC&pg=PA358.

## References

* Zermelo, Ernst (1904). "Beweis, daß jede Menge wohlgeordnet werden kann" (in de). Mathematische Annalen 59 (4): 514-516. doi:10.1007/BF01445300. http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/index.php?id=11&PPN=GDZPPN002260018&L=1. Retrieved 3 January 2016. Reprinted in English translation as "Proof that every set can be well-ordered", van Heijenoort 1976, pp. 139-141.

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