Carl B. Allendoerfer

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Allendoerfer

Carl Barnett Allendoerfer (born April 4, 1911 in Kansas City , † September 29, 1974 ) was an American mathematician .

life and work

Allendoerfer was the son of a banker. He studied at Haverford College and from 1932 to 1934 at Oxford University (New College) as a Rhodes scholar. In 1937 he received his doctorate ( The Embedding of Riemann Spaces in the Large ) at Princeton University under Tracy Thomas (1899-1983 ) and then taught at Haverford College. In 1948/49 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study . In 1951 he became a professor at the University of Washington . 1951 to 1962 he was head of the mathematics faculty. 1957 to 1958 he was a Fulbright Lecturer visiting professor at Cambridge University .

Allendoerfer dealt with topology and differential geometry, where he worked with André Weil on the Gauß-Bonnet theorem in the 1940s . Together they found in 1943 a generalization (already sought by Heinz Hopf ) to higher dimensions (Allendoerfer-Weil formulas), for which Chern then gave a particularly transparent proof in 1944 . He is also known as a math teacher. Here he represented the early teaching of abstract concepts, for example from set theory (in the sense of the Bourbaki movement), known in the USA as the New Math movement. This was recorded in the 1959 report of the College Entrance Examination Board of which Allendoerfer was a member. Allendoerfer wrote several well-known mathematics textbooks for schools with Cletus Oakley ( Fundamentals of Freshman Mathematics from 1959 was particularly well known ) and also wrote educational films on mathematics (for example about cycloids , the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, pi and area measures, geometric transformations) . He founded the summer schools for math teachers at the University of Washington and was President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in 1959/60 , whose Distinguished Service Award he received in 1972. Under his presidency, the MAA took over Mathematics Magazine from Glenn James . 1952 to 1956 he was editor of the American Mathematical Monthly.

In honor of Allendoerfer, the MAA annually awards the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award for an outstanding article in Mathematics Magazine.

He received the Lester Randolph Ford Award for his article Generalization of Theorems about Triangles (Mathematics Magazine, Volume 38, 1965, p. 253) .

Shōshichi Kobayashi is one of his doctoral students .

Fonts

  • with Cletus Oakley: Principles of Mathematics , McGraw-Hill. 1955
  • with Oakley: Fundamentals of Freshman Mathematics , McGraw-Hill 1959
  • Mathematics for Parents , MacMillan 1965
  • with Oakley: Fundamentals of College Algebra , McGraw-Hill 1967
  • Principles of Arithmetic and Geometry for Elementary School Teachers , MacMillan 1971
  • Calculus of Several Variables and Differentiable Manifolds , Macmillan, 1974
  • with Oakley, Donald Kerr: Elementary Functions , McGraw-Hill, 1977

source

  • Brief biography in Gerald Alexanderson, Ross (Editor): The Harmony of the World. 75 years of Mathematics Magazine , MAA 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ^ C. Allendoerfer, A. Weil: The Gauss-Bonnet theorem for Riemannian polyhedra, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., Vol. 53, 1943, pp. 101-129
personal data
SURNAME Allendoerfer, Carl B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Allendoerfer, Carl Barnett
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Kansas City
DATE OF DEATH 29th September 1974