Andrzej Schinzel

Andrzej Schinzel
Jacobs, Konrad · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · source
Name	Andrzej Schinzel
Birth date	5 April 1937
Birth place	Sandomierz, Poland
Death date	22 August 2021
Death place	Warsaw, Poland
Nationality	Polish
Fields	Number theory
Workplaces	Polish Academy of Sciences, University of Warsaw
Alma mater	University of Warsaw
Doctoral advisor	Wacław Sierpiński

Andrzej Schinzel

Andrzej Schinzel was a Polish mathematician known for deep contributions to number theory, especially to polynomial theory, Diophantine equations, and prime distribution. A long-time member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and professor at the University of Warsaw, he worked in the mathematical lineage of Wacław Sierpiński and interacted with contemporaries such as Henryk Iwaniec, Carl Ludwig Siegel, and Atle Selberg. His work influenced researchers across Europe, North America, and Japan and connected to results by Paul Erdős, Enrico Bombieri, and Yakov Sinai.

Early life and education

Born in Sandomierz, he completed early schooling in Kielce and moved to Warsaw to study mathematics at the University of Warsaw. At Warsaw he encountered faculty including Wacław Sierpiński, Kazimierz Kuratowski, and visiting scholars from France and Italy. He completed his doctoral studies under the supervision of Sierpiński, joining a lineage that traced through Stefan Banach and intersected with work by André Weil and Emil Artin.

Academic career

Schinzel joined the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and held professorships associated with the University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences. He participated in international conferences such as those organized by the International Mathematical Union, the European Mathematical Society, and the American Mathematical Society. He supervised doctoral students who later worked at institutions including Princeton University, ETH Zurich, Université Paris-Sud, University of Cambridge, and Kyoto University. He collaborated with scholars from Italy, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States, contributing to workshops at Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and summer schools at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.

Research and contributions

His research addressed conjectures and theorems in algebraic and analytic number theory, including work on polynomial values, irreducibility, and prime-producing polynomials. He formulated and popularized conjectures that connected to the Bunyakovsky conjecture, Schinzel's hypothesis H, and problems related to Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions and Hardy–Littlewood conjectures. He studied reducibility criteria related to results of Hilbert and Gauss, and his investigations intersected with methods from sieve theory developed by Atle Selberg and John Friedlander. Schinzel worked on Diophantine approximation issues related to theorems of Thue and Siegel, and his papers engaged with results by Alan Baker, Gerd Faltings, and André Weil on rational points.

He proved results on integer-valued polynomials that connected to earlier work of Emil Artin and Jacques Hadamard, and his statements on irreducible polynomials influenced computational approaches used in computer algebra systems designed at places such as CNRS and Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. His conjectures stimulated progress by researchers like Paul Erdős, Jerome Barkley Rosser, Andrew Granville, K. Ramachandra, and Roger Heath-Brown, and they remain central to open problems tied to prime numbers and Diophantine equations.

Awards and honors

Schinzel was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and received national distinctions including awards from the Polish Mathematical Society and state decorations from Poland. He was invited to speak at major gatherings of the International Congress of Mathematicians and was honored with lectureships at institutions such as Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University. He served on editorial boards of journals connected to Cambridge University Press and Springer Verlag and received honorary recognition from universities in Italy, France, and Japan.

Selected publications

- Schinzel, A., and collaborators; papers in journals of the American Mathematical Society, Annals of Mathematics, and Acta Arithmetica on polynomial irreducibility and prime values. - Monographs and lecture notes published in series by Springer, Cambridge University Press, and proceedings of the European Mathematical Society. - Seminal articles addressing Schinzel's hypothesis H, results on reducibility extending ideas of Hilbert and Eisenstein, and expository surveys appearing in volumes from the International Congress of Mathematicians.

Personal life and legacy

Schinzel maintained connections with Polish institutions such as the University of Warsaw and contributed to mathematical education through seminars at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His legacy persists in the work of students and collaborators at centers including Moscow State University, ETH Zurich, University of Cambridge, MIT, and University of Tokyo. Conjectures and problems he proposed continue to motivate research by mathematicians at the Collège de France, Institute for Advanced Study, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, and numerous universities worldwide, sustaining his influence on modern number theory.

Category:Polish mathematicians Category:Number theorists Category:1937 births Category:2021 deaths