Schmidt

Erhard Schmidt

Born: 13 Jan 1876 in Dorpat, Germany (now Tartu, Estonia)
Died: 6 Dec 1959 in Berlin, Germany

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Schmidt worked in Berlin and his main research topic was functional analysis. His doctorate was obtained under Hilbert's supervision. His main interest was in integral equations and Hilbert space.

Schmidt is best remembered for the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalisation process, which takes a basis of a space and constructs an orthogonal one from it. However Laplace presented this process before Gram or Schmidt.

In 1908 Schmidt worked on infinitely many equations in infinitely many unknowns, introducing various geometric notations and terms which are still in use for describing spaces of functions. Schmidt's ideas were to lead to the geometry of Hilbert spaces.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Schmidt's work on abstract linear spaces

Tell me about Schmidt's work on topology

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. E Hellinger and O Toeplitz, Integralgleichungen und Gleichungen mit unendlichvielen Unbekannten, Encyklopädie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 13 (Leipzig, 1923-27), 1335-1602. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996