Max August Zorn
Categories: Mathematician stubs | 1906 births | 1993 deaths | 20th century mathematicians | American mathematicians | German mathematicians | Lutherans
Max August Zorn (June 6, 1906 in Krefeld, Germany - March 9, 1993 in Bloomington, Indiana, USA) was a German-born American mathematician.
He was an algebraist, group theorist, and numerical analyst.
He is famous for Zorn's lemma, a powerful tool in set theory that is applicable to a wide range of mathematical constructs such as vector spaces, ordered sets, etc.
He was a professor at Indiana University from 1946 until his death.
According to Indiana University math professor Kent Orr, a traffic light was installed near the math building on account of Zorn nearly being killed by a car as an elderly professor emeritus.
Zorn was also an avid guitar player; there is a picture of him playing guitar hanging in Rawles Hall, where Bloomington's math faculty resides.
Max Zorn married Alice Schlottau and they had one son Jens and one daughter Liz. Zorn was the grandfather of Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.
External links
- Biography at the MacTutor archive
- Genealogy at the Mathematics Genealogy Project