Shimshon Amitsur

Shimshon Amitsur, Leeds, 1972 (photo by George M. Bergman)

Shimshon Avraham Amitsur (born Kaplan; Hebrew: עמיצור שמשון; born August 26, 1921 – died September 5, 1994) was an Israeli mathematician. He is best known for his work in ring theory, an area of abstract algebra.

Biography

Amitsur was born in Jerusalem and studied at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Jacob Levitzki. His studies were repeatedly interrupted, first by World War II and then by the Israel's War of Independence. He received his M.Sc. degree in 1946, and his Ph.D. in 1950. Later, for his joint work with Levitzki, he received the first Israel Prize in Exact Sciences. He worked at the Hebrew University until his retirement in 1989.

Amitsur was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences, where he was the Head for Experimental Science Section. He was one of the founding editors of the Israel Journal of Mathematics, and the mathematical editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia. Amitsur received a number of awards, including the honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University in 1990. His students included Avinoam Mann, Amitai Regev, Eliyahu Rips and Aner Shalev.

Awards

Amitsur and Jacob Levitzki were each awarded the Israel Prize in exact sciences, in 1953, its inaugural year.

See also

List of Israel Prize recipients

Further reading

• "Shimshon Avraham Amitsur (1921 — 1994)", by A. Mann, Israel Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 96 (December 1996), ix - xxvii.

External links

• Shimshon Amitsur at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Shimshon Amitsur", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews