HURWITZ, ADOLF

HURWITZ, ADOLF (1859–1919), German mathematician. Hurwitz, who was born in Hildesheim and studied under Karl Leopold Weierstrass, hugo kronecker , and Felix Klein, was appointed professor of mathematics at the Zurich Polytechnion in 1892. His papers dealt mainly with number theory. Many of his problems were posed by Klein and the solutions by Hurwitz show a rare insight into the basic principles required for tackling fundamental problems of great difficulty. He was one of the first mathematicians to make use of Georg Cantor's results on the non-countability of the continuum. Hurwitz was an outstanding teacher as well as a brilliant research mathematician. His collected works, published in two volumes in 1932 and 1933, include a biographical essay. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 20 (1922), xlviii–liv. (Barry Spain)