Hans Frederick Blichfeldt was an American mathematician of a Danish origin. He is noted for his work on group theory and the geometry of numbers.
Background
Hans Frederick Blichfeldt was born on January 9, 1873, in Illar, Denmark. He was the son of Erhard Christoffer Laurentius Blichfeldt, a farmer who came from a long line of ministers, and Nielsine Maria Scholer. Fortunately for Hans, his family emigrated to the United States when he was fifteen.
Education
Blichfeldt showed unusual mathematical aptitude at an early age. He was assisted in his studies by his father, and in general, he did well in all subjects. He passed the university entrance examinations with honors but did not attend because his parents were unable to afford it.
After moving to the United States, Blichfeldt spent four years as a laborer on farms and in sawmills in the Midwest and West and two years traveling about the country as a surveyor. Blichfeldt entered the recently founded Stanford University in 1894 and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1896 and his Master of Arts in 1897.
Not having enough money to go to Europe for a doctorate, as was the custom among the better-known mathematicians, he borrowed the money from a Stanford professor, Rufus Green, and enrolled in the University of Leipzig, where he studied under the famous mathematician Sophus Lie. In one year he received his doctorate summa cum laude in 1898, with the dissertation “On a Certain Class of Groups of Transformation in Three-dimensional Space.”
Career
During the year 1898 Blichfeldt was employed by Stanford as an instructor. He obtained the rank of full professor in 1913. He accepted the chairmanship of the mathematics department in 1927 and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1938. In addition, Blichfeldt served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1911 and at Columbia University during the summers of 1924 and 1925. He was professor emeritus at Stanford until his death.
Blichfeldt’s contributions were primarily in the form of articles for the Society publications and European mathematics journals. In addition, he published the text Finite Collineation Groups and coauthored Theory and Applications of Finite Groups with G. A. Miller and E. Dickson.
Views
Blichfeldt's lifework was devoted to group theory and number theory. Some of the many topics that he covered were diophantine approximations, orders of linear homogeneous groups, the theory of geometry of numbers, approximate solutions of the integers of a set of linear equations, low-velocity angle fire, finite collineation groups, and characteristic roots.
Membership
Blichfeldt was extremely active in the American Mathematical Society and gave numerous talks in many parts of the country on his favorite topics, group theory, and number theory. In 1912 he was elected vice-president of the Society. In 1920 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Personality
Blichfeldt's phenomenal ability to do all the surveying computations mentally so impressed his colleagues that they encouraged him to become a mathematician.