Albrecht Pfister

Who is Albrecht Pfister?

Albrecht Pfister is a German mathematician specializing in algebra and in particular quadratic forms.

Pfister received his doctoral degree in 1961 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The title of his doctoral thesis was Über das Koeffizientenproblem der beschränkten Funktionen von zwei Veränderlichen. His thesis advisors were Martin Kneser and Karl Stein. In 1966 he received his habilitation at the Georg August University of Göttingen. From 1970 until his retirement he was professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

In the theory of quadratic forms over fields, the Pfister forms that he introduced in 1965 bear his name.

In 1970, he was an invited speaker on the topic Sums of squares in real function fields at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice.