Ernst Witt was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 born on the island of Als (German: Alsen). Shortly after his birth, he and his parents moved to China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, and he did not return to Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 until he was nine.

After his schooling, Witt went to the University

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

 of Freiburg im Breisgau, and the University of Göttingen

Göttingen

Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...

.
He joined the Nazi party and was an active party member. Witt completed his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in 1934 with Professor Emmy Noether

Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether was an influential German mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by David Hilbert, Albert Einstein and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of...

 and later became a lecturer. He was then a member of a team led by Helmut Hasse

Helmut Hasse

Helmut Hasse 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 classfield theory and diophantine geometry , and to local zeta functions.-Life:He was born in Kassel, and died in...

.

From 1937 until 1979, he taught at the University of Hamburg

University of Hamburg

The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...

. In the 1970s Witt claimed that in 1940 he discovered what would eventually be named the "Leech lattice

Leech lattice

In mathematics, the Leech lattice is an even unimodular lattice Λ24 in 24-dimensional Euclidean space E24 found by .-History:Many of the cross-sections of the Leech lattice, including the Coxeter–Todd lattice and Barnes–Wall lattice, in 12 and 16 dimensions, were found much earlier than...

" many years before John Leech

John Leech (mathematician)

John Leech was a British mathematician working in number theory, geometry and combinatorial group theory. He is best known for his discovery of the Leech lattice in 1965. He also discovered Ta in 1957...

 discovered it in 1965, but Witt did not publish his discovery and the details of exactly what he did are unclear; see his collected works . He died in Hamburg in 1991.

Witt's work was mainly concerned with the theory of quadratic form

Quadratic form

In mathematics, a quadratic form is a homogeneous polynomial of degree two in a number of variables. For example,4x^2 + 2xy - 3y^2\,\!is a quadratic form in the variables x and y....

s and related subjects such as algebra

Algebra

Algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and relations, and the constructions and concepts arising from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures...

ic function fields

Function field of an algebraic variety

In algebraic geometry, the function field of an algebraic variety V consists of objects which are interpreted as rational functions on V...

.

See also

• Witt algebra
  Witt algebra
  In mathematics, the complex Witt algebra, named after Ernst Witt, is the Lie algebra of meromorphic vector fields defined on the Riemann sphere that are holomorphic except at two fixed points. It is also the complexification of the Lie algebra of polynomial vector fields on a circle, and the Lie...
  
  
• Witt decomposition
• Witt design (Witt geometry)
• Witt group
  Witt group
  In mathematics, a Witt group of a field, named after Ernst Witt, is an abelian group whose elements are represented by symmetric bilinear forms over the field.-Definition:Fix a field k. All vector spaces will be assumed to be finite-dimensional...
  
  
• Witt index
• Witt polynomial
• Witt ring
  Witt vector
  In mathematics, a Witt vector is an infinite sequence of elements of a commutative ring. Ernst Witt showed how to put a ring structure on the set of Witt vectors, in such a way that the ring of Witt vectors over the finite field of order p is the ring of p-adic integers.-Motivation:Any p-adic...
  
  
• Witt scheme
• Witt's theorem
  Witt's theorem
  Witt theorem, named after Ernst Witt, is a basic result in the algebraic theory of quadratic forms: any isometry between two subspaces of a nonsingular quadratic space over a field k may be extended to an isometry of the whole space. An analogous statement holds also for skew-symmetric, Hermitian...
  
  
• Witt vector
  Witt vector
  In mathematics, a Witt vector is an infinite sequence of elements of a commutative ring. Ernst Witt showed how to put a ring structure on the set of Witt vectors, in such a way that the ring of Witt vectors over the finite field of order p is the ring of p-adic integers.-Motivation:Any p-adic...
  
  
• Bourbaki–Witt theorem
  Bourbaki–Witt theorem
  In mathematics, the Bourbaki–Witt theorem in order theory, named after Nicolas Bourbaki and Ernst Witt, is a basic fixed point theorem for partially ordered sets. It states that if X is a non-empty chain complete poset, andsuch that...
  
  
• Shirshov–Witt theorem

External links