Ernst Witt

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Ernst Witt (June 26, 1911-July 3, 1991) was a German mathematician born on the island of Als, (German: Alsen). Shortly after his birth, he and his parents moved to China, and he did not return to Europe until he was nine.

After his schooling, Witt went to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, and the University of Göttingen, where he completed his Ph.D. with Professor Emmy Noether and later became a lecturer. From 1937 until 1979, he taught at the University of Hamburg. In 1940 Witt discovered what would eventually be named the "Leech lattice" 15 years before John Leech discovered it, but Witt did not publish his discovery (see his collected works for details). He died in Hamburg in 1991.

Witt's work was mainly concerned with the theory of quadratic forms and related subjects such as algebraic function fields.

[edit] References

• Ernst Witt Collected papers. Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998. ISBN 3-540-57061-6

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Ernst Witt", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Ernst Witt at the Mathematics Genealogy Project