Steinitz

Ernst Steinitz

Born: 13 June 1871 in Laurahütte, Silesia, Germany (now Huta Laura, Poland)
Died: 29 Sept 1928 in Kiel, Germany

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Steinitz gave the first abstract definition of a field in Algebraische Theorie der Körper in 1910. Prime fields, separable elements and the degree of transcendence of an extension field are all introduced in this paper. He proved that every field has an algebraically closed extension field.

The now standard construction of the rationals as equivalence classes of pairs of integers under the equivalence relation: (a,b) is equivalent to (c,d) if and only if ad = bc was also given by Steinitz in 1910.

Steinitz was a friend of Toeplitz, much influenced by Heinrich Weber and by Hensel's results on p-adic numbers in 1899. Steinitz also worked on polyhedra and his manuscript on the topic was edited by Rademacher in 1934 after his death.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography 
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JOC/EFR February 1996