Background
Karl Fueter was born on June 30, 1880, in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of Eduard Rudolf Fueter, an architect, and Adele Gelzer.
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
After receiving his early education in Basel, Fueter began to study mathematics at Göttingen in 1899 and graduated in 1903.
Biegenstraße 10, 35037 Marburg, Germany
Fueter received his doctorate at the University of Marburg in 1905.
mathematician scientist scholars
Karl Fueter was born on June 30, 1880, in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of Eduard Rudolf Fueter, an architect, and Adele Gelzer.
After receiving his early education in Basel, Fueter began to study mathematics at Göttingen in 1899 and graduated in 1903. Under the supervision of David Hilbert he presented a work dealing with the theory of quadratic number fields. After further study in Paris, Vienna, and London, Fueter received his doctorate at the University of Marburg in 1905.
After graduating Fueter worked as a docent at Marburg. He became a professor of mathematics in Basel in 1908. He accepted the same post at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe in 1913 and at the University of Zurich in 1916. His field of interest was the theory of numbers as presented in Hilbert’s work. He derived the class formula for the entire group of Abelian number fields over an imaginary quadratic base field. He gave a summary of these in his Vorlesungen uber in singu laren Moduln und die komplexe Multiplikation der elliptischen Funktionen. Later he founded his own school of thought on the theory of functions of a quaternion variable.
Fueter was rector of the University of Zurich from 1920 to 1922, and president of the Euler Commission of the Swiss Society of Sciences. With Andreas Speiser he was instrumental in the editing and publication of the collected works of Leonhard Euler. He gave plenary lectures at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1932 at Zurich and in 1936 at Oslo. Fueter was an editor for the Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici. He held the rank of colonel in the artillery of the Swiss militia, and at the outbreak of World War II he served in the Department of Press and Radio.
Fueter was particularly noted for his opposition to Nazism and to the spread of its policies within Switzerland.
Fueter was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Swiss Society of Sciences. He was also a founding member of the Swiss Mathematical Society.
In 1908 Karl married Amelie von Heusinger. They had a daughter.