ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Leopold Kronecker

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German mathematician most notable for his view that all of mathematics ought to be based on integers.

Also a proponent of the mathematical philosophy of finitism, a forerunner of intuitionism and constructivism.

His influence on the mathematical establishment was considerable.

His views put him in direct opposition most notably to Georg Cantor, who was exploring the mathematics of the transfinite.

Solved the quintic equation using group theory, but this proof of course did not use radicals as this had been proved to be impossible by the Abel-Ruffini Theorem.

The first to provide an axiomatic formulation for the structure of an abstract group.

Nationality

Prussian, then German

Born: December 7, 1823, Liegnitz, Prussia (now Legnica, Poland)
Studied under Kummer
1841: Became a student at Berlin University, studied under Dirichlet and Steiner
Summer of 1843: University of Bonn
winter semester of 1843-44: University of Breslau, studied under Kummer again
1845: Submitted PhD thesis
Left academia, returned home to Liegnitz to attend to family business
1848: Married Fanny Prausnitzer
1855: Returned to Berlin independently wealthy, but did not hold any university appointment
23 January 1861: Elected to the Berlin Academy
October 1862: Started lecturing at Berlin University
1880: Took over control of Crelle's Journal as the editor
1883: Became a codirector of the mathematical seminar at Berlin University (taking over from Kummer)
31 January 1884: Elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of London
Died: December 29, 1891, Berlin, Germany