Hans Rademacher

Hans Adolph Rademacher (3 April 1892, Wandsbeck, now Hamburg-Wandsbek – 7 February 1969, Haverford, Pennsylvania, USA) was a German mathematician, known for work in mathematical analysis and number theory.

Biography

Rademacher received his Ph.D. in 1916 from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen; Constantin Carathéodory supervised his dissertation. He was dismissed from his position at the University of Breslau by the Nazis in 1933 due to his public support of the Weimar Republic, and emigrated from Europe in 1934.

After leaving Germany, he moved to Philadelphia and worked at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 1962; he held the Thomas A. Scott Professorship of Mathematics at Pennsylvania from 1956 to 1962. Rademacher had a number of well known students, including George Andrews, Paul T. Bateman, and Theodor Estermann.

Research

Rademacher performed research in analytic number theory, mathematical genetics, the theory of functions of a real variable, and quantum theory. Most notably, he developed the theory of Dedekind sums.

Awards and honors

With his retirement from the University of Pennsylvania, a group of mathematicians provided the seed funding for The Hans A. Rademacher Instructorships, and honored him with an honorary degree as Doctor of Science.

See also

• Rademacher complexity
• Rademacher function
• Rademacher sum
• Rademacher–Kolmogorov theorem
• Rademacher–Menchov theorem
• Rademacher's series
• Rademacher distribution
• Rademacher's theorem

Further reading

• Berndt, Bruce C. (1992). "Hans Rademacher (1892–1969)" (PDF). Acta Arithmetica 61: 209–231. http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/aa/aa61/aa6131.pdf. Retrieved 2009-02-07.  Obituary and list of publications.

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Hans Rademacher", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Rademacher.html .
• Hans Rademacher at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.