Person: Roth (2), Klaus

Klaus Roth won a Fields Medal in 1958 for his work on approximating algebraic numbers by rationals.

After graduating, Roth was appointed as an assistant master at the internationally famous Gordonstoun School, which lies 10 km north of Elgin in Scotland.
Roth returned to London in 1946 to undertake research at University College.
Roth made a remarkable mathematical breakthrough while still a lecturer at University College.
It was for this work that Roth was awarded a Fields Medal in 1958.
Davenport presented Roth with the Fields Medal at the International Congress in Edinburgh in 1958.
Roth's theorem settles a question which is both of a fundamental nature and of extreme difficulty.
Davenport, in his Fields Medal presentation, mentions another problem solved by Roth.
This was Roth's proof in 1952 of a conjecture made in 1935 by Erdős and Turán.
It is not difficult to find the moral in Dr Roth's work.
Roth moved to the chair of Pure Mathematics in Imperial College, London in 1966 and held this chair until 1988.
The Fields Medal was not the only honour to be bestowed on Roth.

Born 29 October 1925, Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland). Died 10 November 2015, Inverness, Scotland.

View full biography at MacTutor

Prize Fields Medal, Origin Poland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive