Jacob Grommer
Jacob Grommer (1879–1933) was a Russian mathematician.
Life
He was born in 1879 in Brest-Litovsk (then Russia, currently Brest, Belarus).[1] At a young age, he became interested in mathematics, and became a doctoral student under David Hilbert in Gottingen.[1]
After completing his doctoral thesis in 1914, for more than 10 years he served as an assistant of Albert Einstein, working with him in his (unsuccessful) attempts to build a unified field theory.[1]
As early as 1917, Einstein asked Paul Ehrenfest for help finding a place for Grommer, a “true Russian” in his words, in the USSR. Later Einstein facilitated Grommer’s contacts with Russian physicists to arrange his appointment as a professor of the Belarusian State University in Minsk in 1929. Shortly afterwards, Grommer was elected as a member of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.[1]
He died peacefully in 1933. Starting from 1937, he was a non-person in the annals of the Belarusian Academy, and in Russia in general.[1]
Grommer made contributions to mathematical physics, complex analysis, and analytic number theory.[1]
Grommer suffered from acromegaly, giving him a deformed appearance that impeded his career.[2][3]
References
- ^ a b c d e f Pasha Zusmanovich, "Mathematicians Going East," Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Volume 14 Issue 1 (January 2024), pages 114-167. DOI: 10.5642/jhummath.EGCM7534. Pages 118-119.
- ^ Gutfreund, Hanoch and Jürgen Renn. The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures. Princeton University Press. 2017. Page 393.
- ^ Denis, Brian. Einstein: A Life. John Wiley & Sons. 1997. Page 169.
Sources
- As of this edit, this article uses content from "Mathematicians Going East", authored by Pasha Zusmanovich, which is licensed in a way that permits reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, but not under the GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed.