Finite Geometries

Biography of Peter Dembowski Peter Dembowski was born in Berlin on April 1, 1928. After studying mathematics at the University of Frankfurt am Main, he pursued his graduate studies at Brown University and at the University of Illinois, mainly with Reinhold Baer. Dembowski returned to Frankfurt in 1956. Shortly before his premature death in January 1971, he had been appointed to a chair at the University of Tübingen. Dembowski taught at the universities of Frankfurt and Tübingen and - as visiting professor - in London (Queen Mary College), Rome, Madison, WI, and Chicago, IL. Dembowski's chief research interest lay in the connections between finite geometries and group theory. His book "Finite Geometries", brought together essentially all that was known at that time about finite geometrical structures, including key results of the author, in a unified and structured perspective. This book became a standard reference as soon as it appeared in 1968. It influenced the expansion of combinatorial geometric research, and also left its trace in neigh-bouring areas.