Leopold Kronecker

Leopold Kronecker
Kronecker in 1865
Born(1823-12-07)7 December 1823
Died29 December 1891(1891-12-29) (aged 68)
NationalityPrussian
Alma materUniversity of Berlin
Known for
AwardsForMemRS (1884)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisor
Doctoral students

Leopold Kronecker (German: [ˈkʁoːnɛkɐ]; 7 December 1823 – 29 December 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, algebra and logic, and criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory. Heinrich Weber quoted Kronecker[1] as having said, "Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk" ("God made the integers, all else is the work of man").[2] Kronecker was a student and life-long friend of Ernst Kummer.

  1. ^ Weber (1893)
  2. ^ The English translation is from Gray. In a footnote, Gray attributes the German quote to "Weber 1891/92, 19, quoting from a lecture of Kronecker's of 1886".
    Gray, Jeremy (2008), Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics, Princeton University Press, p. 153, ISBN 978-1400829040
    Weber, Heinrich L. 1891–1892. Kronecker. Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung 2:5-23. (The quote is on p. 19.)