Georg Karl Wilhelm Hamel (12 September 1877 – 4 October 1954) was a German mathematician with interests in mechanics, the foundations of mathematics and function theory. Biography Hamel was born in Düren, Rhenish Prussia. He studied at Aachen, Berlin, Göttingen, and Karlsruhe. His doctoral adviser was David Hilbert. He taught at Brünn in 1905, Aachen in 1912, and at the Technical University of Berlin in 1919. In 1927, Hamel studied the size of the key space for the Kryha encryption device. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1932 at Zurich and in 1936 at Oslo. He was the author of several important treatises on mechanics. He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1938 and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1953. He died in Landshut, Bavaria. Selected publications ("On the geometries in which the straight lines are the shortest", Hamel's doctoral dissertation on Hilbert's fourth problem. A version may be found in Mathematische Annalen 57, 1903.) See also Hamel basis Hamel dimension Cauchy's functional equation Hilbert's fourth problem References 1877 births 1954 deaths 19th-century German mathematicians 20th-century German mathematicians Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Modern cryptographers People from the Rhine Province RWTH Aachen University alumni Academic staff of RWTH Aachen University Humboldt University of Berlin alumni University of Göttingen alumni Karlsruhe Institute of Technology alumni Academic staff of the Technical University of Berlin German cryptographers Fluid dynamicists Linear algebraists Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin