Biography:Ernst Specker

Short description: Swiss mathematician (1920–2011)

Ernst Specker, 1982

Ernst Paul Specker (11 February 1920, Zürich – 10 December 2011, Zürich) was a Switzerland mathematician. Much of his most influential work was on Quine's New Foundations, a set theory with a universal set, but he is most famous for the Kochen–Specker theorem in quantum mechanics, showing that certain types of hidden variable theories are impossible. He also proved the ordinal partition relation ω² → (ω²,3)², thereby solving a problem of Erdős.

Specker received his Ph.D. in 1949 from ETH Zurich, where he remained throughout his professional career.

See also

• Specker sequence
• Baer–Specker group

External links

• Biography at the University of St. Andrews
• Ernst Specker (1920-2011), Martin Fürer, January 25, 2012.
• Ernst Specker: Selecta, Birkhauser, 1990.