Scharlau received his doctorate in 1967 from the
University of Bonn. His doctoral thesis
Quadratische Formen und Galois-Cohomologie (Quadratic Forms and Galois Cohomology) was supervised by
Friedrich Hirzebruch. Scharlau was at the
Institute for Advanced Study for the academic year 1969–1970 and in spring 1972. From 1970 he was a professor (most recent
Institutsdirektor) at the
University of Münster, from where he retired. Scharlau's research deals with
number theory and, in particular, the theory of quadratic forms, about which he wrote a 1985 monograph
Quadratic and Hermitian Forms in Springer's series
Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Scharlau was also an amateur
ornithologist and author of two novels,
I megali istoria - die große Geschichte (2nd edition 2001), set on the Greek island of
Naxos, and
Scharife (2001), set on the island of
Zanzibar in the 19th century. He also deals with the
history of mathematics and wrote, with Hans Opolka, a historically-oriented introduction to number theory. Their book presents, among other topics, the analytical class number formula of
Dirichlet and the geometry of the numbers in the 19th century. Scharlau wrote a multi-part biography of
Alexander Grothendieck. He was the father of the cognitive psychologist Ingrid Scharlau. ==Selected publications==