Edmund Landau profoundly influenced the development of number theory. His primary research focused on analytic number theory, especially the distribution of prime numbers and prime ideals. An extremely productive author of at least 250 publications, Landau's writings had a distinct style. His prose was carefully crafted, highlighted by lucid, comprehensive argumentation and a thorough explanation of the background knowledge required to understand it. Landau's writing style became more succinct over the course of his career. He was forced to retire from teaching at the behest of Nazi anti-Semitic policies.
Born in Berlin on February 14, 1877, Landau was the son of Leopold, a gynecologist, and Johanna (Jacoby) Landau. Johanna Landau came from a wealthy family with whom the Landaus lived in an affluent section of Berlin. Although Leopold Landau was an assimilated Jew and a German patriot, in 1872 he helped found an Judaism academy in Berlin. Landau himself studied in Berlin at the Französische Gymnasium (French Lycee), graduating two years early at age 16. He promptly began studying at Berlin University. Landau had published twice before receiving his Ph.D; both pieces explored chess related mathematical problems.
Under the tutelage of Georg Frobenius, Landau was awarded his doctorate at Berlin University in 1899 at the age of 22 years old. His dissertation dealt with what became his life's work: number theory. Landau began teaching at Berlin in 1901, when he earned the advanced degree which allowed him to teach mathematics. He proved to be a popular lecturer at the university because of his personal excitement of the carefully prepared material he presented to his students.
Landau's first major accomplishment as a mathematician came in 1903, when he simplified and improved upon the proof for the prime number theorem conjectured by Karl Gauss in 1796, and demonstrated independently by Jacques Hadamard and C.J. de la Vallee-Poussin in 1896. In Landau's proof, the theorem's application extended to algebraic number fields, specifically to the distribution of ideal primes within them.
Landau married Marianne Ehrlich (daughter of Paul Ehrlich, a friend of Landau's father, who won the 1908 Nobel prize in medicine or physiology) in 1905 at Frankfurt-am-Main, and fathered two daughters and two sons (one of whom died before age five). He served as a professor of mathematics at Berlin until 1909.
Landau published his first major work in 1909, the two-volume Handbuch der Lehre von der Vertiolung der Prizahalen. The volumes were the first orderly discussion of analytic number theory, and were used for many years in universities as a research and teaching tool. Landau's texts are still considered important documents in the history of mathematics.
In the same year, Landau became a full professor at the University of Göttingen. Although the faculty at Berlin tried twice to keep Landau on staff, the government wanted to make Göttingen a center of German mathematical learning. They succeeded in their objective, and Landau stayed there until 1934. In 1913, Landau even declined an offer from a university in Heidelberg for a chair position. Although he was still a charismatic, inspiring teacher by the 1920s he was criticized for his rigid, almost perfectionistic lecture style. A demanding lecturer, he insisted that one of his assistants sit through his presentations so any errors could be immediately corrected.
Landau continued his father's support of Jewish institutions. In 1925, he gave a lecture on mathematics in Hebrew at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an institution Landau heartily embraced. His activities there continued when he took a sabbatical from Göttingen and taught a few mathematics classes in 1927-28. Landau even contemplated staying in Jerusalem at one point.
Landau also published another important treatise in 1927, the three volumes of Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie. In these texts, Landau brought together the various branches of number theory in one comprehensive text. He throughly explored each branch from its origins to the then-current state of research. Two years later, the widely respected Landau received a honorary doctorate of philosophy from the University of Oslo in Norway. The next year, Landau published another landmark book, entitled Grundlagen der Analysis. Beginning with Giuseppe Peano's axioms for natural numbers, this volume presented arithmetic in four forms of numbers: whole, rational, irrational, and complex.
The Nazi Party and their policies of discrimination against Jews led to a premature end to Landau's academic career. In late 1933, he was forced to cease teaching at Göttingen, although he was one of the last Jewish professors to be purged from that institution. While technically not subject to the 1933 non-Aryan clause attached to Nazi civil servant laws, all Jewish mathematical professors were forced to leave Göttingen. Landau stayed on through the summer and fall terms of 1933, but he could only teach classes through assistants. Landau would sit in the back of every class, ready to teach at any moment if his ban was raised.
On November 2, 1933, Landau attempted to resume teaching his class. The students, alerted to this impropriety in advance, boycotted his lecture. SS Guards were stationed at the entrance in case a student did not want to boycott; only one got in. When it was clear he would not be allowed to lecture, Landau returned to his office. The boycotting students explained by letter that they no longer wanted to be taught by a Jew and be indoctrinated in his mode of thought.
In 1934, Landau was given his retirement leave, and he and his family moved back to Berlin. Although he never taught in Germany again, he did lecture out of the country at universities such as Cambridge in 1935 and Brussels in 1937. Landau died in Berlin of natural causes on February 19, 1938, and was buried in the Berlin-Weissensee Jewish cemetery.
This is the complete article, containing 938 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
