Reinhold Baer and his influence on the theory of Abelian groups. (Q1409605)

Reinhold Baer had a tremendous influence on the theory of Abelian groups. His ideas on this subject spread over several branches of mathematics and the impact of his contributions can only be measured today. The author of this nice article gives a comprehensive and beautifully written survey on R. Baer's influence on the theory of Abelian groups as well as a description of the person Reinhold Baer. Due to the enormous work Baer had done in mathematics the article concentrates on his publications on the theory of \(p\)-groups, torsion-free groups, mixed groups, subgroup lattices, endomorphism rings, the group of extensions \(\text{Ext}\) and injective modules. Main results due to Baer are mentioned and Fuchs describes nicely how Baer was motivated and inspired by other mathematicians and how his results have initiated and contributed to various subjects in Abelian group theory and other areas of mathematics. Since the author had met Baer several times he finishes the paper with a personal statement which underlines that Baer was an extraordinary mathematician and one of the founders of Abelian group theory.