Kurt Mahler

Kurt Mahler FRS (26 July 1903, Krefeld, Germany – 25 February 1988, Canberra, Australia) was a mathematician, spoke fluent Chinese and was an expert photographer. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1948 and a member of the Australian Academy of Science in 1965.

He was awarded the London Mathematical Society's Senior Berwick Prize in 1950, the De Morgan Medal, 1971, and the Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal, 1977.Mahler proved that the Prouhet–Thue–Morse constant and the Champernowne constant 0.1234567891011121314151617181920... are transcendental numbers.

Family

Kurt Mahler's parents were Hermann Mahler (1858-1941) and Henriette Stern (1860-1942). The Mahler family were Jewish and long established in the Prussian Rhineland. Hermann Mahler had become an apprentice bookbinder, working his way up to become the owner of a small printing and bookbinding firm. In this respect he was following the Mahler family tradition of working in the printing and bookbinding trade.

Hermann and Henriette Mahler had eight children with Kurt and his twin sister Hilde being the youngest. Of the six older children, Lydia married a printer, Josef took over Hermann's printing firm but died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, while the other four children died young. Mahler recalled that when he was a child, their home was run on strictly orthodox Jewish lines and we were also good German patriots.
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