Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson (born October 6, 1918 in Waldenburg , Province of Silesia ; † April 11, 1974 in New Haven , Connecticut , aka Abraham Robinsohn ) was an American mathematician of German origin and co-founder of nonstandard analysis . He was also an expert in aerodynamics .
life and work
His father died shortly before Abraham Robinson's birth. As Jews with a long Zionist tradition, the family emigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1933, where Robinson began studying mathematics with Jakob Levitzki and Abraham Fraenkel in Jerusalem in 1935 . He was a brilliant student and, after graduating in 1939, won a scholarship to continue studying at the Sorbonne in Paris . During the invasion of France in 1940, he was able to escape to England on one of the last boats, where he joined the Air Force of Free France. As a mathematician, he was subordinated to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) research center in Farnborough , where he soon developed into an expert in wing shapes (delta wings for supersonic flows). In addition to his aerodynamic research, he continued to be interested in mathematical logic and, after completing his master's degree at the University of Jerusalem in 1946, continued his studies at the University of London until his doctorate in Jerusalem in 1949. During this time and later in Toronto, he did pioneering work in model theory .
In 1951 he became professor of applied mathematics in Toronto , 1957 successor to Fraenkel at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1962 he became professor of mathematics and philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles and from 1967 until his death professor at Yale University . In 1973 he developed pancreatic cancer and died of it a few months after an operation.
Robinson is best known for his (co-) founding of Nonstandard Analysis in 1961, in which he - like Curt Schmieden and Detlef Laugwitz in 1958 - put the idea of infinitesimal elements, which Leibniz and other mathematicians of the 17th century already used, on a solid basis posed.
In 1972 Robinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1974 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1973 he received the Brouwer Medal . In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Forcing in model theory ) and in 1950 in Cambridge (Massachusetts) (Applied symbolic logic).
literature
- JW Dauben Abraham Robinson: The Creation of Nonstandard Analysis, A Personal and Mathematical Odyssey , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, and article in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Young, Cooking, Körner, Roquette, Obituary Bulletin London Mathematical Society, Vol. 8, 1976, p. 307 with list of publications
- Abraham Robinson The Metamathematics of Algebraic Systems 1951 (Dissertation)
- ders. Complete theories 1956
- ders., Laurmann Wing theory 1956
- ders. Introduction to model theory and to the metamathematics of algebra 1963
- ders. Non-Standard Analysis 1966
- ders. Selected papers , 3 Vols., Yale University Press 1979 (Vol. 1 Model Theory, Vol. 2 Philosophy and Non-Standard Analysis, Vol. 3 Aerodynamics)
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Abraham Robinson. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Biography of McIntyre BAMS 1977
Individual evidence
- ^ Curt Schmieden, Detlef Laugwitz: "An extension of the infinitesimal calculation", Mathematische Zeitschrift , Volume 69, 1958, pp. 1–39
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Robinson, Abraham |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 6, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Waldenburg , Province of Silesia |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 11, 1974 |
| Place of death | New Haven (Connecticut) |