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Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden Prove?

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The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden

Abstract

This chapter presents a most fascinating historical investigation answering the question, who conjectured the famous theorem proven by Van der Waerden in 1926.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    E-mail to A. Soifer, dated June 21, 1995.

  2. 2.

    Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin, documents UK-Sch 342, Bd. I, Bl. 4.

  3. 3.

    Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin, document UK-Sch 342, Bd.I, Bl.25.

  4. 4.

    [Bra2].

  5. 5.

    The Annual September 18–24, 1927 meeting of DMV took place in Bad Kissingen in Bavaria.

  6. 6.

    Audio recorded by me.

  7. 7.

    See the facsimile of [Wae23] in this section.

  8. 8.

    See the facsimile of [Wae24] in this section.

  9. 9.

    I thank Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, for providing me copies of the relevant documents.

  10. 10.

    In numbering his answers, Van der Waerden skipped number 3.:-).

  11. 11.

    See also a recent English translation [LN].

  12. 12.

    Frederick Schuh, 1875–1966, Ph.D. under Diederik Korteweg, as was L. E. J. Brouwer after him, a very versatile mathematician, with numerous publications in analysis, geometry, number theory, statistics, recreational mathematics, teaching of mathematics, etc.

  13. 13.

    Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941), a mathematician, Ph.D. 1900 under Max Noether, the father of Emmy Noether, and a legendary World Chess Champion for 27 years, 1894–1921.

  14. 14.

    As I learned from N. G. de Bruijn [Bru4], “In his Brettspiele der Völker (Berlin 1931) Lasker describes a game of ‘Laska’ he lost to Baudet at a tournament in The Hague 1920. (‘Laska’ was Lasker’s own invention, which he tried to promote at a time he thought that eventually all serious chess games would lead to a draw.)”

  15. 15.

    A rare mistake in a fine Visser’s lecture; Lukomskaya was not a student of Khinchin. But then in this book we have learned for the first time details about Lukomskaya.

  16. 16.

    Actually 1927.

  17. 17.

    The reader would recognize the name of this lake. Lasker–Baudet humorous episode happened at the place where on January 20, 1942 15 high-ranking civil servants and SS-officers decided on “The Final Solution” of the Jewish question in Europe. They agreed to deport European Jews to the East and murder them all.

  18. 18.

    [BII7].

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  1. College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

    Alexander Soifer

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Soifer, A. (2015). Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden Prove?. In: The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_38

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