Bartel Leendert van der Waerden

Bartel van der Waerden was a Dutch mathematician, the eldest of three sons of a left wing socialist politician who taught mathematics and mechanics in Amsterdam. He began studying mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1919 at the age of sixteen and, after his first degree, spent seven months at Göttingen with Emmy Noether. His textbook Moderne Algebra grew out of lectures by Emmy Noether and Emil Artin, who suggested that he write the entire book; volume one was published in 1930 and volume two, which holds much of his own work, in 1931. His work in algebraic geometry applied the ideal theory in polynomial rings created by Artin, Hilbert and Noether, together with the algebraic theory of fields.