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layout: person nodeid: bookofproofs$Leopoldt categories: history,20th-century parentid: bookofproofs$604 tags: origin-germany orderid: 1927 title: Leopoldt, Heinrich-Wolfgang born: 1927 died: 2011 keywords: heinrich-wolfgang leopoldt,leopoldt description: Heinrich-Wolfgang Leopoldt was a German mathematician who worked in algebraic number theory. references: bookofproofs$6909 contributors: @J-J-O'Connor,@E-F-Robertson,bookofproofs

Leopoldt.jpg

Heinrich-Wolfgang Leopoldt was a German mathematician who worked in algebraic number theory.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

  • This drafted all boys born in 1926 or 1927, which included Leopoldt, into the military where they were supervised by the Hitler youth who began a programme of ideological indoctrination.
  • After the war in 1945 the future looked very uncertain and Leopoldt decided that his best option was to take up an apprenticeship.
  • The teacher was, of course, already fully aware of Leopoldt's mathematical abilities and he began to teach him the mathematical principles of astronomy.
  • Soon the teacher was encouraging Leopoldt return to the Gymnasium to complete his school education so that he might gain admission to university.
  • Leopoldt took his teacher's advice and went back to the Gymnasium, gaining the qualifications to enter university in 1947.
  • In his Erinnerungen Leopoldt reports that this lecture had left a deep impression upon him, in particular Hasse's remarks on the relationship between beauty and truth in mathematics, combined with various instances of parallels between number theory and music.
  • This lecture, Leopoldt recalls, led him to study number theory with highest priority.
  • In the year 1950 Hasse left Berlin for Hamburg and his student Leopoldt followed him there.
  • Leopoldt was awarded his doctorate in 1954 by the University of Hamburg for his thesis Über Einheitengruppe und Klassenzahl reeller algebraischer Zahlkörper Ⓣ(On the unit group and the class number of real algebraic number field).
  • This programme played a major role in Leopoldt's research throughout his career.
  • Leopoldt was able to prove a modification of Noether's result in the case where the ramification is not tame even though in this case an integral normal base does not exist.
  • It is probably for his discovery of the ppp-adic LLL-functions that Leopoldt is best known although some may say that it is for the Leopoldt Conjecture.
  • Among Leopoldt's service to mathematics we should mention that he was an editor of the Journal of Number Theory from 1969 to 1987.
  • After Leopoldt retired from his professorship at the university of Karlsruhe, he moved to the village of Unterlüss about 28 km north east of Celle.

Born 22 August 1927, Schwerin, Mecklenburg, Germany. Died 28 July 2011, Unterlüss, Germany.

View full biography at MacTutor