Emil Artin (; March 3, 1898 – December 20, 1962) was an Austrian mathematician of Armenian descent.
Artin was one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century. He is best known for his work on algebraic number theory, contributing largely to class field theory and a new construction of L-functions. He also contributed to the pure theories of rings, groups and fields.
Along with Emmy Noether, he is considered the founder of modern abstract algebra.
Early life and education
Parents Emil Artin was born in Vienna to parents Emma Maria, née Laura (stage name Clarus), a soubrette on the operetta stages of Austria and Germany, and Emil Hadochadus Maria Artin, Austrian-born of mixed Austrian and Armenian descent. His Armenian last name was Artinian which was shortened to Artin.Notices of the AMS. Vol. 49, # 4, April 2002, pp. 469–470 Several documents, including Emil's birth certificate, list the father's occupation as "opera singer" though others list it as "art dealer." It seems at least plausible that he and Emma had met as colleagues in the theater. They were married in St. Stephen's Parish on July 24, 1895.
Early education
Artin entered school in September 1904, presumably in Vienna. By then, his father was already suffering symptoms of advanced syphilis, among them increasing mental instability, and was eventually institutionalized at the recently established (and imperially sponsored) insane asylum at Mauer Öhling, 125 kilometers west of Vienna. It is notable that neither wife nor child contracted this highly infectious disease. Artin's father died there July 20, 1906. Young Artin was eight.
On July 15, 1907, Artin's mother remarried to Rudolf Hübner: a prosperous manufacturing entrepreneur from Reichenberg, Bohemia (now Liberec in the Czech Republic). Documentary evidence suggests that Emma had already been a resident in Reichenberg the previous year, and in deference to her new husband, she had abandoned her vocal career. Hübner deemed a life in the theater unseemly—unfit for the wife of a man of his position.
In September 1907, Artin entered the Volksschule in Horní Stropnice. For that year, he lived away from home, boarding on a local farm. The following year, he returned to the home of his mother and stepfather, and entered the Realschule in Reichenberg, where he pursued his secondary education until June 1916.
In Reichenberg, Artin formed a lifelong friendship with a young neighbor, Arthur Beer, who became an astronomer, teaching for many years at University of Cambridge. Astronomy was an interest the two boys shared already at this time. They each had telescopes. They also rigged a telegraph between their houses, over which once Beer excitedly reported to his friend an astronomical discovery he thought he had made—perhaps a supernova, he thought—and told Artin where in the sky to look. Artin tapped back the terse reply "A-N-D-R-O-M-E-D-A N-E-B-E-L." (Andromeda nebula)
Artin's academic performance in the first years at the Realschule was spotty. Up to the end of the 1911–1912 school year, for instance, his grade in mathematics was merely "genügend," (satisfactory). Of his mathematical inclinations at this early period he later wrote, "Meine eigene Vorliebe zur Mathematik zeigte sich erst im sechzehnten Lebensjahr, während vorher von irgendeiner Anlage dazu überhaupt nicht die Rede sein konnte." ("My own predilection for mathematics manifested itself only in my sixteenth year; before that, one could certainly not speak of any particular aptitude for it.") His grade in French for 1912 was actually "nicht genügend" (unsatisfactory). He did rather better work in physics and chemistry. But from 1910 to 1912, his grade for "Comportment" was "nicht genügend."
Artin spent the school year 1912–1913 away from home, in France, a period he spoke of later as one of the happiest of his life. He lived that year with the family of Edmond Fritz, in the vicinity of Paris, and attended a school there. When he returned from France to Reichenberg, his academic work markedly improved, and he began consistently receiving grades of "gut" or "sehr gut" (good or very good) in virtually all subjects—including French and "Comportment." By the time he completed studies at the Realschule in June 1916, he was awarded the Reifezeugnis (diploma—not to be confused with the Abitur) that affirmed him "reif mit Auszeichnung" (qualified with distinction) for graduation to a technical university.
University education Now that it was time to move on to university studies, Artin was no doubt content to leave Reichenberg, for relations with his stepfather were clouded. According to him, Hübner reproached him "day and night" with being a financial burden, and even when Artin became a university lecturer and then a professor, Hübner deprecated his academic career as self-indulgent and belittled its paltry emolument.
In October 1916, Artin matriculated at the University of Vienna, having focused by now on mathematics. He studied there with Philipp Furtwängler, and also took courses in astrophysics and Latin.
Studies at Vienna were interrupted when Artin was drafted in June 1918 into the Austrian army (his Army photo ID is dated July 1, 1918). Assigned to the K.u. K. 44th Infantry Regiment, he was stationed northwest of Venice at Primolano, on the Italian front in the foothills of the Dolomites. To his great relief, Artin managed to avoid combat by volunteering for service as a translator—his ignorance of Italian notwithstanding. He did know French, of course, and some Latin, was generally a quick study, and was motivated by a highly rational fear in a theater of that war that had often proven a meat-grinder. In his scramble to learn at least some Italian, Artin had recourse to an encyclopedia, which he once consulted for help in dealing with the cockroaches that infested the Austrian barracks. At some length, the article described a variety of technical methods, concluding finally with—Artin laughingly recalled in later years—"la caccia diretta" ("the direct hunt"). Indeed, "la caccia diretta" was the straightforward method he and his fellow infantrymen adopted.
Artin survived both war and vermin on the Italian front, and returned late in 1918 to the University of Vienna, where he remained through Easter of the following year.
By June 1919, he had moved to Leipzig and matriculated at the university there as a "Class 2 Auditor" ("Hörer zweiter Ordnung"). Late the same year, Artin undertook the formality of standing for a qualifying examination by an academic board of the Oberrealschule in Leipzig, which he passed with the grade of "gut" (good), receiving for the second time the Reifezeugnis (diploma attesting the equivalence of satisfactory completion of 6 years at a Realschule). How this Leipzig Reifezeugnis differed technically from the one he had been granted at Reichenberg is unclear from the document, but it apparently qualified him for regular matriculation as a student at the university, which normally required the Abitur.
From 1919 to June 1921, Artin pursued mostly mathematical studies at Leipzig. His principal teacher and dissertation advisor was Gustav Herglotz. Additionally, Artin took courses in chemistry and various fields of physics, including mechanics, atomic theory, quantum theory, Maxwellian theory, radioactivity, and astrophysics. In June 1921 he was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree, based on his "excellent" dissertation, "Quadratische Körper im Gebiete der höheren Kongruenzen" ("Quadratic Fields in the domain of higher congruences"), and the oral examination which—his diploma affirms—he had passed three days earlier "with extraordinary success."
In the fall of 1921, Artin moved to the University of Göttingen, considered the "Mecca" of mathematics at the time, where he pursued one year of post-doctoral studies in mathematics and mathematical physics with Richard Courant and David Hilbert. While at Göttingen, he worked closely with Emmy Noether and Helmut Hasse.
Aside from consistently good school grades in singing, the first documentary evidence of Artin's deep and lifelong engagement with music comes from the year in Göttingen, where he was regularly invited to join in the chamber music sessions hosted by Richard Courant. He played all the keyboard instruments, and was an especially accomplished flautist, although it is not known exactly by what instruction he had achieved proficiency on these instruments. He became especially devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Career
Professorship at Hamburg Courant arranged for Artin to receive a stipend for the summer of 1922 in Göttingen, which occasioned his declining a position offered him at the University of Kiel. The following October, however, he accepted an equivalent position at Hamburg, where in 1923, he completed the Habilitation thesis (required of aspirants to a professorship in Germany), and on July 24 advanced to the rank of Privatdozent.
On April 1, 1925, Artin was promoted to Associate Professor (außerordentlicher Professor). In this year also, Artin applied for and was granted German citizenship. He was promoted to full Professor (ordentlicher Professor) on October 15, 1926.
Early in the summer of 1925, Artin attended the Congress of the Wandervogel youth movement at Wilhelmshausen near Kassel with the intention of gathering a congenial group to undertake a trek through Iceland later that summer. Iceland (before the transforming presence of American and British forces stationed there during World War II) was still a primitive country in 1925, with a thinly scattered population and little transportation infrastructure. Artin succeeded in finding six young men to join him in this adventure. In the second half of August 1925, the group set out by steamer from Hamburg, first to Norway, where they boarded a second steamer that took them to Iceland, stopping at several of the small east fjord ports before arriving at their destination, Húsavík in the north of the island. Here the Wandervogel group disembarked, their initial goal, trekking down the Laxá River to Lake Mývatn. They made a circuit of the large, irregular lake, staying in farm houses, barns, and occasionally a tent as they went. When they slept in barns, it was often on piles of wet straw or hay. On those lucky occasions when they slept in beds, it could be nearly as damp on account of the rain trickling through the sod roofs. The tent leaked as well.
Artin kept a meticulous journal of this trip, making daily entries in a neat, minuscule hand. He and several of the young men had brought cameras, so that the trek was also documented by nearly 200 photographs. Artin's journal attests to his overarching interest in the geology of this mid-Atlantic island, situated over the boundary of two tectonic plates whose shifting relation makes it geologically hyperactive.
In keeping with the Wandervogel ethos, Artin and his companions carried music with them wherever they visited. The young men had packed guitars and violins, and Artin played the harmoniums common in the isolated farmsteads where they found lodging. The group regularly entertained their Icelandic hosts, not in full exchange for board and lodging, to be sure, but for goodwill certainly, and sometimes for a little extra on their plates, or a modestly discounted tariff.