Georg Karl Wilhelm Hamel (12 September 1877 – 4 October 1954) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 with interests in mechanics

Mechanics

Mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....

, the foundations of mathematics

Foundations of mathematics

Foundations of mathematics is a term sometimes used for certain fields of mathematics, such as mathematical logic, axiomatic set theory, proof theory, model theory, type theory and recursion theory...

 and function theory.

Hamel was born in Düren

Düren

Düren is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, capital of Düren district. It is located between Aachen and Cologne on the river Rur.-Roman era:Celts inhabited Düren's area before the Romans. They called their small settlement Durum . After the Celts other Germanic tribes settled this area...

, Rhenish Prussia. He studied at Aachen

RWTH Aachen

RWTH Aachen University is a research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with roughly 33,000 students enrolled in 101 study programs....

, Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

, Göttingen, and Karlsruhe. His adviser of doctoral study was David Hilbert

David Hilbert

David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of...

. He taught at Brünn in 1905, Aachen in 1912, and at the Technical University of Berlin

Technical University of Berlin

The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...

 in 1919. In 1927, Hamel studied the size of the key space

Key space

In cryptography, an algorithm's key space refers to the set of all possible keys that can be used to initialize it. For example, if an algorithm works using a key that is a string of 10 bits, then its key space is the set of all binary strings of length 10. i.e...

 for the Kryha

Kryha

In the history of cryptography, the Kryha machine was a device for encryption and decryption, appearing in the early 1920s and used until the 1950s. The machine was the invention of Alexander von Kryha . During the Second World War, Kryha worked as an officer for the German Wehrmacht...

 encryption

Encryption

In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...

 device. He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences

Prussian Academy of Sciences

The Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin on 11 July 1700, four years after the Akademie der Künste or "Arts Academy", to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer.-Origins:...

 in 1938 and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1953. He died in Landshut

Landshut

Landshut is a city in Bavaria in the south-east of Germany, belonging to both Eastern and Southern Bavaria. Situated on the banks of the River Isar, Landshut is the capital of Lower Bavaria, one of the seven administrative regions of the Free State of Bavaria. It is also the seat of the...

, Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

.

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