Robert Schatten (January 28, 1911 – August 26, 1977) was a Polish-American mathematician.

Robert Schatten was born in Lwów. He received his magister degree from Lwów University in 1933. After his emigration to the United States he enrolled at Columbia University and received his master's degree in 1939. He continued his research under the supervision of Francis J. Murray and received his doctorate degree in 1942. Shortly after being appointed to a junior professorship, he joined the army. During his army training he suffered a back injury which affected him for the remainder of his life.

In 1943 he was appointed to an assistant professorship at the University of Vermont. He spent two years at the National Research Council, where he worked together with John von Neumann and Nelson Dunford. In 1946, Schatten went to Kansas University, first as extraordinary professor until 1952, then as ordinary professor until 1961, with intermissions through stays at the Institute for Advanced Study (1950 and 1952–1953). In 1960–1961 he spent a year at the University of Southern California and in 1961–1962 he taught at the State University of New York. In 1962 he became professor at Hunter College, where he stayed until his death

Rober Schatten was Jewish; his entire family was murdered during World War II.

Schatten's main field of mathematical studies was tensor products of Banach spaces. He is the namesake of the Schatten class operators.

Schatten died in New York City in 1977.

Literature

* A Theory of Cross-Spaces. Annals of Mathematics Studies, ISBN 0-691-08396-7
* Norm Ideals of Completely Continuous Operators. Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, 2. Folge, ISBN 3-540-04806-5