Bartel Leendert van der Waerden

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (February 2, 1903, Amsterdam, Netherlands – January 12, 1996, Zürich, Switzerland) was a Dutch mathematician. Van der Waerden learned advanced mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Göttingen, from 1919 until 1926. He was much influenced by Emmy Noether at Göttingen. Amsterdam awarded him a Ph.D. for a thesis on algebraic geometry, supervised by Hendrick de Vries. Göttingen awarded him the... more

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (February 2, 1903, Amsterdam, Netherlands – January 12, 1996, Zürich, Switzerland) was a Dutch mathematician. Van der Waerden learned advanced mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Göttingen, from 1919 until 1926. He was much influenced by Emmy Noether at Göttingen. Amsterdam awarded him a Ph.D. for a thesis on algebraic geometry, supervised by Hendrick de Vries. Göttingen awarded him the habilitation in 1928. In his 27th year, Van der Waerden published his Algebra, an influential two-volume treatise on abstract algebra, still cited, and perhaps the first treatise to treat the subject as a comprehensive whole. This work systematized an ample body of research by Emmy Noether, David Hilbert, Richard Dedekind, and Emil Artin. In the following year, 1931, he was appointed professor at the University of Leipzig. The Third Reich made life difficult for Van der Waerden as a foreigner teaching in Germany, but he refused to give up his... less