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Ernst Hairer

Austrian mathematician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ88587 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ernst Hairer (born 19 June 1949) is a professor of mathematics at the University of Geneva known for his work in numerical analysis.

His PhD was completed at the University of Innsbruck.

He is the father of the mathematician Martin Hairer, who won the Fields Medal in 2014.

Hairer is a member of the editorial boards for the journals Mathematics of Computation and Journal of Scientific Computing.

He wrote, with others, Solving Ordinary Differential Equations (Hairer, Nørsett, Wanner) and L'analyse au fil de l'histoire (Hairer, Wanner).

Awards and honors

Hairer holds a doctor honoris causa from the University of Lund.

In 2003 he was awarded, jointly with Gerhard Wanner, the Peter Henrici Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

In 2009 a conference on scientific computing and differential equations was held in honor of his 60th birthday, at the University of Geneva, and in the same year the 7th International Conference in Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics in Crete was dedicated in his honor.

In 2009–2010 he was John-von-Neumann guest professor at the Technical University of Munich.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ernst Hairer” is austrian mathematician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ernst, Hairer and Austrian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 2014, 2003, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949-06-19. For this dossier, Ernst, Hairer and Austrian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “austrian mathematician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q88587. VIAF identifies the subject as 49301635. The Library of Congress control number is n83044777. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2014, 2003 and 2009.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ernst Hairer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ernst Hairer primary sources, Ernst Hairer archive and Ernst research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ernst Hairer”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ernst Hairer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.