In memory of Professor Peter Plaumann
Prof. Dr. Peter Plaumann was born on September 14, 1937 in Sofia, Bulgaria. From 1957 to 1966 he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Frankfurt and completed his studies with a diploma thesis on “Compactness criteria in locally compact groups”. Shortly thereafter, he received his doctorate under Helmut Salzmann and Reinhold Baer. His dissertation was entitled “Extensions of compact groups by abelian groups”.
After his doctorate, he spent longer periods at the University of Tübingen and at the University of Kaiserlauten. Plaumann also researched and taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Universidad de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba. The habilitation was completed in Kaiserslautern in 1975. The habilitation thesis was entitled: “Resolvable groups with locally compact automorphism groups”.
In the same year Prof. Plaumann was offered an associate professorship at the Mathematical Institute in Erlangen. However, due to his guest lectureship in Cuba in the winter semester 1972/73 and against the background of the Cold War, his appointment was subject to a review process lasting several months, which was only completed in April 1976.
Prof. Plaumann researched and taught in the Algebra and Geometry group at the Mathematical Institute in Erlangen for more than 25 years, he retired on September 30, 2002.
In research, his focus was on topological groups, especially structural statements on locally compact groups. He also investigated algebraic problems that arose in connection with synthetic geometry. He had a broad mathematical interest and was one of those mathematicians who not only advanced the development of global theories, but also devoted himself to concrete problems in order to solve them.
Prof. Dr. Peter Plaumann died on 14 April 2020.