Background
He was born in Dorpat, Russian Empire (now Tartu, Estonia) and died in Tübingen, Germany.
mathematician university professor topologist
He was born in Dorpat, Russian Empire (now Tartu, Estonia) and died in Tübingen, Germany.
His most famous result may be his theorem on the existence of a prime decomposition for 3-manifolds. His proof originated the concept of normal surface, a fundamental cornerstone of the theory of 3-manifolds. He assisted Wilhelm Süss in the founding of the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach and served as the director of the institute from 1958 to 1959.
Kneser had formulated the problem or non-integer iteration of functions and proved the existence of the entire Abel function of the exponential.
On the base of this Abel function, he constructed the functional square root of the exponential function as a half-iteration of the exponential, id est (that is) a function φ such that φ(φ(z)) = exp(z). Kneser was a student of David Hilbert.
He was an advisor of a number of notable mathematicians, including Reinhold Baer.
Sturmabteilung; Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities. Göttingen Academy of Sciences. Finnish Academy of Science and Letters]
Hellmuth Kneser was a member of the NSDAP and also the Société Anonyme. In July 1934 he wrote to Ludwig Bieberbach a short note supporting his anti-semitic views and stating: "May God grant German science a unitary, powerful and continued political position.".