Robert Remak and the Estimation of Units and Regulators

Robert Remak’s contributions to twentieth century mathematics range over a broad area. His name is best-known among group theorists in connection with questions concerning decomposition and his exploitation of the direct product concept. Specialists in the geometry of numbers are acquainted with some of the work that led Issai Schur in 1936 to praise Remak’s geometric acuity and to state that “he may without doubt be designated as a leading scholar in [this] beautiful and important field„ [Washington 1936]. Often overlooked are the indirect contributions he made to universal algebra, particularly through his concept of a subdirect product. Still largely unexplored are his seminal papers on mathematical models of economic systems. Mathematicians who knew him at the University of Berlin have written of his broad mathematical knowledge, his sharp critical faculty, his distinctive and often displeasing personality, and his eccentricities. A few of these contemporaries have alluded to his having been a victim of the Third Reich.