The Collection
The Priority Research Centre for Computer-Assisted Research, Mathematics and it’s Applications at the University of Newcastle have put together a collection of Kurt Mahler’s works. Most of the works were collected by Alf van der Poorten with others from Jon Borwein, Yann Bugeaud, and Michael Coons. The collection contains over 220 of Mahler’s works in both German and English
Kurt Mahler
Kurt Mahler was born on 26 July 1903 at Krefeld am Rhein in Germany; he died in his 85th year on 26 February 1988 in Canberra, Australia. From 1933 onwards most of his life was spent outside of Germany, but his mathematical roots remained in the great school of mathematics that existed in Germany between the two world wars. Above all Mahler lived for mathematics; he took great pleasure in lecturing, researching and writing. It was no surprise that he remained active in research until the last days of his life. He was never a narrow specialist and had a remarkably broad and thorough knowledge of large parts of current and past mathematical research. At the same time he was oblivious to mathematical fashion, and very much followed his own path through the world of mathematics, uncovering new and simple ideas in many directions. In this way he made major contributions to transcendental number theory, diophantine approximation, p-adic analysis, and the geometry of numbers. Towards the end of his life, Kurt Mahler wrote a considerable amount about his own experiences; see ‘Fifty years as a mathematician’, ‘How I became a mathematician’, ‘Warum ich eine besondere Vorliebe fur die Mathematik habe’, ‘Fifty years as a mathematician II’.
The Mahler Lectures
The Mahler lectures are a biennial activity organised by the Australian Mathematical Society, and supported by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, in which a prominent mathematician tours Australian universities giving lectures at a variety of levels, including giving several public lectures. The lectures are dedicated to the legacy of Kurt Mahler.
