Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, ForMemRS (German: [vaɪl]; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist, logician and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of Göttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski.
Hermann Weyl | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl 9 November 1885 |
| Died | 8 December 1955 (aged 70) |
| Alma mater | University of Munich University of Göttingen |
| Known for | List of topics named after Hermann Weyl Ontic structural realism Wormhole |
| Spouses | Friederike Bertha Helene Joseph (nickname "Hella") (1893–1948) Ellen Bär (née Lohnstein) (1902–1988) |
| Children | Fritz Joachim Weyl (1915–1977) Michael Weyl (1917–2011) |
| Awards | Fellow of the Royal Society Lobachevsky Prize (1927) Gibbs Lecture (1948) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Pure mathematics, Mathematical physics, Foundations of Mathematics |
| Institutions | Institute for Advanced Study University of Göttingen ETH Zürich |
| Thesis | Singuläre Integralgleichungen mit besonder Berücksichtigung des Fourierschen Integraltheorems (1908) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Hilbert |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other notable students | Saunders Mac Lane |
| Signature | |
His research has had major significance for theoretical physics as well as purely mathematical disciplines such as number theory. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century, and an important member of the Institute for Advanced Study during its early years.
Weyl contributed to an exceptionally wide range of mathematical fields, including works on space, time, matter, philosophy, logic, symmetry and the history of mathematics. He was one of the first to conceive of combining general relativity with the laws of electromagnetism. Freeman Dyson wrote that Weyl alone bore comparison with the "last great universal mathematicians of the nineteenth century", Poincaré and Hilbert. Michael Atiyah, in particular, has commented that whenever he examined a mathematical topic, he found that Weyl had preceded him.