Banesh Hoffmann

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Banesh Hoffmann (born September 6, 1906 in Richmond , North Yorkshire , † August 5, 1986 ) was a British mathematician and physicist.

Life

Hoffmann studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oxford and from 1929 at Princeton University , where he received his doctorate in 1932 under Oswald Veblen on projective relativity theory. From 1935 to 1937 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study with Albert Einstein . This is where the joint work with Einstein and Leopold Infeld on the approximate equation of motion of N point-shaped bodies in the general relativity theory ( Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann equation ), which made him famous, came about . From 1937 he was at Queen's College of the City University of New York , where he became a professor in 1952 and retired in the 1960s, but lectured until the 1970s.

In 1947 he was again at the Institute of Advanced Study with Einstein.

He is the author of a biography of Einstein and a volume of memories of Einstein with Helen Dukas , Einstein's former secretary.

In 1964 he received the Gravity Research Foundation award. In 1973 he received the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Mathematical Society . He was also a member of the New York Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel , Viking Press 1979 (with assistance from Helen Dukas)
    • German edition Albert Einstein. Creator and rebel , Dietikon-Zürich, Belser 1976
  • with Helen Dukas Albert Einstein, the human side: New glimpses from his archives , Princeton University Press 1979
  • Memories of Einstein in Harry Woolf (editor) Some strangeness in proportion , Addison-Wesley 1979
  • Einstein's ideas: the principle of relativity and its historical roots , Spektrum Akademischer Verlag 1988
  • Relativity and its roots , Scientific American Books, Freeman 1983
  • About vectors , Dover 1975
  • The tyranny of testing , New York, Crowell-Collier 1962

literature

  • Brief biography in Abraham Pais Subtle is the Lord , Oxford University Press 2005, pp. 495f

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Einstein, Infeld, Hoffmann The Gravitational Equations and the Problem of Motion , Annals of Mathematics, Volume 39, 1938, pp. 65-100
  2. ↑ Described as excellent by the Einstein biographer Abraham Pais
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmann, Banesh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Richmond
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1986