Axel Thue

Norwegian mathematician (1863–1922)

Axel Thue (Norwegian: [tʉː]; 19 February 1863 – 7 March 1922) was a Norwegian mathematician, known for his original work in diophantine approximation and combinatorics.

Work

Thue published his first important paper in 1909.^[1]

He stated in 1914 the so-called word problem for semigroups or Thue problem, closely related to the halting problem.^[2]

His only known PhD student was Thoralf Skolem.

The esoteric programming language Thue is named after him.

Publications

• Thue, A. (1909), "Über Annäherungswerte algebraischer Zahlen", Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 1909 (135): 284–305, doi:10.1515/crll.1909.135.284, ISSN 0075-4102, S2CID 125903243
• Thue, A. (1977) [1912], "Über die gegenseitige Lage gleicher Teile gewisser Zeichenreihen", Selected Math. Papers of Axel Thue, Universiteitsforlaget: 67

See also

• Roth's theorem – Algebraic numbers are not near-rational
• Semi-Thue system – String rewriting system
• Thue equation – Diophantine equation involving an irreducible bivariate form of deg > 2 over the rationals
• Thue–Morse sequence – Infinite binary sequence generated by repeated complementation and concatenation
• Thue's lemma – Representation of modular integers by "small" fractions
• Word problem for groups – Problem in finite group theory

References

1. O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Axel Thue", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
2. Ronald V. Book and Friedrich Otto, String-rewriting Systems, Springer, 1993, ISBN 0-387-97965-4, p. 36.

External links

• Axel Thue private archive exists at NTNU University Library Dorabiblioteket