Max August Zorn

Max August Zorn (June 6, 1906 in Krefeld, Germany – March 9, 1993 in Bloomington, Indiana, United States) was a German mathematician. He was an algebraist, group theorist, and numerical analyst. He is best known for Zorn's lemma, a powerful tool in set theory that is applicable to a wide range of mathematical constructs such as vector spaces, ordered sets, etc. Zorn's lemma was first discovered by Kazimierz Kuratowski in 1922, and then independently by Zorn in 1935.

Zorn attended the University of Hamburg. He received his Ph.D. in April 1930 for a thesis on alternative algebras. He married Alice Schlottau and they had one son, Jens, and one daughter, Liz. Jens (born June 19, 1931) is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Michigan and an accomplished sculptor. Max Zorn's grandson Eric Zorn is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Max Zorn was appointed as an assistant at the University of Halle but he did not have the opportunity to work there for long since, in 1933, he was forced to leave Germany because of the Nazi policies. He was not, however, Jewish. He emigrated to the United States and was appointed a Sterling Fellow at Yale University. Following his years at Yale, he moved to UCLA, where he remained until 1946. He left the University of California to become professor at Indiana University, holding this position from 1946 until he retired in 1971. He was thesis adviser for Israel Nathan Herstein.

Max Zorn died in March 1993 of congestive heart failure, according to his obituary in The New York Times.