BRAUER, RICHARD DAGOBERT

born Feb. 10, 1901, Berlin died April 17, 1977, Belmont, Mass., U.S. mathematician and educator, a pioneer in the development of algebra theory. Brauer graduated from the University of Knigsberg and received his Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Berlin under Issai Schur. He accepted a teaching position at Knigsberg and remained until 1933, when he left to work with Hermann Weyl on a classical exposition of spinors. The work of Brauer and Weyl later had a bearing on Nobel laureate P.A.M. Dirac's theory of the spinning electron. Brauer then became interested in the work of Georg Frobenius, who had introduced group characters in 1896. Brauer carried forward Frobenius' work and developed a theory of modular characters that gave new insights into the study of group characters and advanced the development of algebra. In 1935 he accepted a position at the University of Toronto and remained there until 1948, when he left to join the faculty at the University of Michigan. He became a professor in Harvard University's mathematics department in 1952 and remained there until his retirement in 1971. He was chairman of the department from 1959 to 1963. In the late 1950s he began formulating a method for classifying finite simple groups, a task that absorbed his attention for the rest of his life. In 1971 Brauer was awarded the National Medal of Science.