- Carl Ludwig Siegel
Infobox Scientist
name = Carl Ludwig Siegel
image_width = 242 x 360 - 22k
caption = Carl Ludwig Siegel
birth_date = birth date|1896|12|31
birth_place =Berlin ,Germany
death_date = death date and age|1981|4|4|1896|12|31
death_place =Göttingen ,Germany
field =Mathematics
work_institutions =Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Princeton University
alma_mater =University of Göttingen
doctoral_advisor =Edmund Landau
doctoral_students =
known_for =Number theory
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
prizes =Wolf Prize in Mathematics
footnotes =Carl Ludwig Siegel (
December 31 1896 –April 4 1981 ) was amathematician specialising innumber theory .Biography
Siegel was born in
Berlin , where he enrolled at theHumboldt University in Berlin in 1915 as a student inmathematics ,astronomy , andphysics . Amongst his teachers wereMax Planck andFerdinand Georg Frobenius , whose influence made the young Siegel abandon astronomy and turn towards number theory instead.In 1917 he was drafted into the
German Army and had to interrupt his studies. After the end ofWorld War I , he enrolled at theGeorg-August University of Göttingen , studying underEdmund Landau , who was his doctoral thesis supervisor (Ph.D. in 1920). He stayed in Göttingen as a teaching and research assistant; many of his groundbreaking results were published during this period. In 1922, he was appointed professor at theJohann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität .Career
In 1938, he returned to
Göttingen before emigrating in 1940 viaNorway to theUnited States , where he joined theInstitute for Advanced Study atPrinceton University , where he had already spent asabbatical in 1935. He returned to Göttingen only afterWorld War II , when he accepted a post asprofessor in 1951, which he kept until his retirement in 1959.Siegel's work on
number theory anddiophantine equation s andcelestial mechanics in particular won him numerous honours. In 1978, he was awarded theWolf Prize in Mathematics , one of the most prestigious in the field.Siegel's work spans
analytic number theory ; and histheorem on thefiniteness of the integer points of curves , for genus > 1, is historically important as a major general result on diophantine equations, when the field was essentially undeveloped. He worked onL-function s, discovering the (presumed illusory)Siegel zero phenomenon. His work derived from theHardy-Littlewood circle method onquadratic form s proved very influential on the later,adele group theories encompassing the use oftheta-function s. TheSiegel modular form s are recognised as part of themoduli theory ofabelian varieties . In all this work the structural implications of analytic methods show through.ee also
*
Siegel's lemma
*Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem
*Brauer-Siegel theorem
*Siegel upper half-space
*Siegel-Weil formula
*Siegel modular form
*Smith–Minkowski–Siegel mass formula
*Riemann-Siegel theta function References
*
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