Emanuel Sperner

Emanuel Sperner (9 December 1905 - 31 January 1980) was a German mathematician, best known for two theorems. He was born in Waltdorf (near Neiße, now Nysa, Poland), and died in Sulzburg-Laufen. He was a student at Hamburg University where his advisor was Wilhelm Blaschke. He was appointed Professor in Königsberg in 1934, and subsequently held posts in a number of universities until 1974.

The Sperner theorem, from 1927, says that the size of an antichain in the power set of an "n"-set is at most the middle binomial coefficient(s). It has several proofs and numerous generalizations.

Sperner's lemma, from 1924, states that every "Sperner coloring" of a triangulation of an "n"-dimensional simplex contains a cell colored with a complete set of colors. It was proven by Sperner to provide an alternate proof of a theorem of Lebesgue characterizing dimensionality of Euclidean spaces. It was later noticed that this lemma provides a direct proof of the Brouwer fixed-point theorem without explicit use of homology.

Sperner's students included Kurt Leichtweiss and Gerhard Ringel.

External links

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* [http://owpdb.mfo.de:4579/person_detail?id=3954 Sperner's photos] – from MFO.

Persondata
NAME = Sperner, Emanuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = German mathematician, best known for two theorems
DATE OF BIRTH = 9 December 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH = Waltdorf, Silesia
DATE OF DEATH = 31 January 1980
PLACE OF DEATH = Sulzburg-Laufen