Walter Purkert

Walter Purkert (born 22 January 1944 in Trautenau) is a German mathematician and historian of mathematics.

Career Purkert received his doctorate (Promotion) in 1972 from Leipzig University. His thesis Die Entwicklung des abstrakten Körperbegriffs (The development of the abstract concept of the algebraic structure called a field) was supervised by Hans Wußing. From 1972 to 1979 Purkert was employed in the mathematics section of Leipzig University's mathematics/natural sciences department. In the mathematics section of Leipzig University's department of the history of medicine and the natural sciences, he was from 1979 to 1987 a lecturer (Dozent), from 1987 to 1991 a professor extraordinarius, and from 1988 to 1990 the director of the mathematics section.

Purkert was a visiting professor in the summer of 1988 at Pace University and for the academic year 1992–1993 at the University of Wuppertal. He has been a research assistant and professor at the University of Bonn since the mid-1990s. There he was coordinating editor of the Hausdorff Edition. Friedrich Hirzebruch, Reinhold Remmert, and Erhard Scholz. There is a first edition done by editors from Germany and four other countries. There is also a supplemented edition. More than twenty mathematicians, historians, philosophers and literary scholars worked together. The edition was carried out as a long-term project by the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste (North Rhine-Westphalia Academy for Sciences and Arts). The edition comprises 10 separate volumes (IA, IB, and II through IX). The volumes were published between 2001 and 2020 by Springer Verlag. Purkert completed (during 2013–2018) the biography of Hausdorff (Volume IB of the edition) begun by Egbert Brieskorn (1936–2013) and also edited Hausdorff's correspondence (Volume IX of the edition). He was elected in 2007 a corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, Paris and in 2015 a member of the , Basel. Felix Hausdorff: Mathematiker, Philosoph und Literat (Mathematik im Kontext), Springer 2021. Felix Hausdorff: Mathematician, Philosopher, Man of Letters. Springer 2024.