Wolfgang M. Schmidt

Wolfgang M. Schmidt is an Austrian mathematician born in Vienna whose most important work lies in number theory. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna, where Edmund Hlawka taught him analysis and number theory, and he received his doctorate there in 1955 with a thesis on the geometry of numbers that J. W. S. Cassels later explained in a chapter of his monograph on the subject. After research visits to Montana State University and appointments in Vienna, Colorado and New York, he became a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1965 and held that post until he retired in 2001. His best known results include the Schmidt Subspace Theorem, which extends Roth's theorem on rational approximation of algebraic numbers to simultaneous approximation, the axiomatic formulation of Schmidt games, and the study of regular systems. His honours include the Cole Prize of the American Mathematical Society, the Humboldt Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he has addressed the International Congress of Mathematicians three times.