Hensel was born in
Königsberg,
Province of Prussia (today
Kaliningrad, Russia), the son of Julia (née von Adelson) and landowner and entrepreneur
Sebastian Hensel. He was the brother of philosopher
Paul Hensel. Kurt and Paul's paternal grandparents were painter
Wilhelm Hensel and composer
Fanny Hensel. Fanny was the sister of
Felix Mendelssohn, daughter of
Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and granddaughter of philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, and entrepreneur
Daniel Itzig. Both of Hensel's grandmothers and his mother were from Jewish families that had converted to Christianity. Hensel studied mathematics in
Berlin and
Bonn, under the mathematicians
Leopold Kronecker and
Karl Weierstrass. Later in his life Hensel was a professor at the
University of Marburg until 1930. He was also an editor of the mathematical ''
Crelle's Journal''. He edited the five-volume collected works of Leopold Kronecker. Hensel is well known for his introduction of
p-adic numbers. First described by him in 1897, they became increasingly important in
number theory and other fields during the twentieth century. ==Publications==