Walter Purkert


Walter Purkert is a German mathematician and historian of mathematics.

Career

Purkert received his doctorate in 1972 from Leipzig University. His thesis Die Entwicklung des abstrakten Körperbegriffs was supervised by Hans Wußing. From 1972 to 1979 Purkert was employed in the mathematics section of Leipzig University's mathematics/natural sciences department. In the mathematics section of Leipzig University's department of the history of medicine and the natural sciences, he was from 1979 to 1987 a lecturer, from 1987 to 1991 a professor extraordinarius, and from 1988 to 1990 the director of the mathematics section.
Purkert was a visiting professor in the summer of 1988 at Pace University and for the academic year 1992–1993 at the University of Wuppertal. He has been a research assistant and professor at the University of Bonn since the mid-1990s. There he was coordinating editor of the Hausdorff Edition. This annotated edition of the collected works of Felix Hausdorff includes the philosophical and literary writings published under Hausdorff's pseudonym Paul Mongré. The leading editorial committee had five members including, besides Purkert, Egbert Brieskorn, Friedrich Hirzebruch, Reinhold Remmert, and Erhard Scholz. There is a first edition done by editors from Germany and four other countries. There is also a supplemented edition. More than twenty mathematicians, historians, philosophers and literary scholars worked together. The edition was carried out as a long-term project by the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. The edition comprises 10 separate volumes. The volumes were published between 2001 and 2020 by Springer Verlag. Purkert completed the biography of Hausdorff begun by Egbert Brieskorn and also edited Hausdorff's correspondence.
Purkert was the co-author, with Hans-Joachim Ilgauds, of a well-regarded biography of Georg Cantor. Purkert also edited Felix Klein's 1891–1892 lectures in Göttingen on Riemann surfaces. In addition to his historical and editorial research, Purkert published mathematical research on stochastic analysis.

Honors

In 2005 Purkert gave the historical lecture Felix Hausdorff - Mathematiker, Philosoph und Literat, which was part of the events accompanying the Euler Lecture. He was elected in 2007 a corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, Paris and in 2015 a member of the, Basel.

Selected publications

Die Hilbertschen Probleme. Erl. von e. Autorenkollektiv unter d. Red. von P.S. Alexandrov. Vortrag "Mathematische Probleme" von D. Hilbert, gehalten auf d. 2. Internat. Mathematikerkongress Paris 1900, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Geest und Portig, Leipzig 1971, 2nd edition 1979, 3rd edition 1983.
  • with Jürgen vom Scheidt: Schwach korrelierte Prozesse und ihre Anwendungen. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1980.
  • with Jürgen vom Scheidt: Random Eigenvalue Problems. North Holland 1983.
  • with Hans-Joachim Ilgauds: Georg Cantor. Teubner, 1985, ; Birkhäuser, 1987
  • * Brückenkurs Mathematik für Wirtschaftswissenschaftler. Teubner, 1995, 9th edition 2022.
  • with Erhard Scholz:
  • with Egbert Brieskorn: Felix Hausdorff-Biographie. volume IB of Hausdorff-Edition, Springer 2018. Felix Hausdorff: Mathematiker, Philosoph und Literat, Springer 2021.
  • * Felix Hausdorff: Mathematician, Philosopher, Man of Letters. Springer 2024.