- Walter Feit
Walter Feit (
October 26 1930 -July 29 2004 ) was amathematician who worked infinite group theory andrepresentation theory .He was born in
Vienna and left forEngland in 1939. He moved to theUnited States in 1946 where he became an undergraduate at theUniversity of Chicago . He did his Ph.D. at theUniversity of Michigan , and became a professor at Cornell in 1952, and atYale in 1964.His most famous result is his joint, with
John G. Thompson , proof of theFeit-Thompson theorem that all finite groups of odd order are solvable. At the time it was written, it was probably the mostcomplicated and difficult mathematical proof ever completed. He wrote almost a hundred other papers, mostly on finite group theory, character theory, andmodular representation theory . Another regular theme in his research was the study of linear groups of small degree, that is, finite groups of matrices in low dimensions. It was often the case that, while the conclusions concerned groups of complex matrices, the techniques employed were frommodular representation theory .He also wrote the books "The representation theory of finite groups" ISBN 0-444-86155-6 and "Characters of finite groups", which are now standard references on character theory, including treatments of modular representationsand modular characters.
He was awarded the
Cole Prize by theAmerican Mathematical Society in 1965, and was elected to theUnited States National Academy of Sciences and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences . He also served as Vice-President of theInternational Mathematical Union .External links
* [http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/04-08-30-01.all.html Yale obituary]
* [http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=5099 Students of Walter Feit]
* [http://www.ams.org/notices/200507/fea-feit.pdf Walter Feit (1930-2004)] , "Notices of the American Mathematical Society"; vol. 52, no. 7 (August 2005).
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