Person: Hamel, Georg Karl Wilhelm
Georg Hamel was a German mathematician who worked in mechanics, the foundations of mathematics and function theory.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- At this time Klein was running a seminar which studied the theory of elasticity, descriptive geometry, and mechanics, and Hamel participated in this seminar.
- Hamel was appointed Professor of Mechanics at the German Technical University of Brünn on 3 October 1905.
- Klein spoke highly of Hamel in his reference but considered Carathéodory superior for the particular position, and Carathéodory was appointed.
- Hamel was appointed to the chair of mechanics at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Hochschule in Aachen on 1 October 1912, then in 1919 he moved to the Technical University of Charlottenburg in Berlin where he was appointed as professor of mathematics and mechanics.
- Hamel was clearly associated with the views of National Socialism and in 1933 spoke of a spiritual bond between mathematics and the "Third Reich".
- Blaschke resigned the Chairmanship of the German Mathematical Society in January 1935 and Hamel was appointed chairman to replace him.
- Although Hamel met with approval by the National Socialists, his leadership was based on mathematical scholarship despite his close links with Nazi policies.
- Together with Süss and Behnke, Hamel also served on an Instruction Commission set up by the German Mathematical Society.
- Hamel worked in function theory, mechanics and the foundations of mathematics.
- He is perhaps best known for the Hamel basis, published in 1905, when he made an early and explicit use of the Axiom of Choice to construct a basis for the real numbers as a vector space over the rational numbers.
- In 1927 Hamel computed the size of the key space of the Kryha-Ciphering-Machine, which was quoted extensively by "Internationale Kryha-Maschinen-Gesellschaft" (Hamburg) to infer the unbreakability of the Kryha machines.
Born 12 September 1877, Düren, Rhineland, Germany. Died 4 October 1954, Landshut, Germany.
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Origin Germany
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
