Mathwar/Personlist/Schmidt Erhard
Erhard Schmidt
(* January 13th 1876 in Dorpat Germany (now Estonia), † December 6th 1959 in Berlin)
Life
His doctorate was obtained from the University of Göttingen in 1905 under Hilbert's supervision. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Entwickelung willkürlicher Funktionen nach Systemen vorgeschriebener and was a work on integral equations. The main ideas of this thesis appeared in Schmidt's 1907 paper which we describe below. After obtaining his doctorate he went to Bonn where he was awarded his habilitation in 1906. After leaving Bonn, Schmidt held positions in Zurich, Erlangen and Breslau before he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Berlin in 1917. The appointment was to fill the chair left vacant by Schwarz's retirement.
Schmidt arrived at the University of Berlin shortly after the death of Frobenius, who had jointly led the department with Schwarz. The other full professor was Schottky. Carathéodory was appointed in 1918 to fill Frobenius's chair and to jointly head mathematics in Berlin with Schmidt. However Carathéodory was to spend only one year in Berlin before leaving. Schmidt now had the main responsibility for filling the vacant chair. This proved a difficult task. Schmidt drew up an impressive list of candidates: Brouwer, Weyl, and Herglotz in that order. The professorship was offered to each of these in turn, with each turning it down. The next person to be offered the chair was Hecke who also turned it down. The position was not filled until 1921 when Bieberbach was offered the post and accepted it. In this same year Schottky retired and Schur, who was already an extraordinary professor in Berlin, was promoted to full professor.
In 1936, when the problems were very difficult, Schmidt was made head of the German delegation to the International Congress of Mathematicians at Oslo. Schmidt held positions of authority at the University of Berlin through these difficult years of Nazi rule.