David van Dantzig

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David van Dantzig (born September 23, 1900 in Amsterdam ; † July 22, 1959 there ) was a Dutch mathematician.

Van Dantzig published his first mathematical work in 1913 as a student. For financial reasons he had to interrupt his schooling and was only able to study at the University of Amsterdam from around 1923 after attending evening schools . In 1927 he was assistant to Jan Arnoldus Schouten at the TH Delft , was then in the teacher training and from 1932 lecturer in Delft, after he had received his doctorate in 1931 at the University of Groningen with Bartel Leendert van der Waerden , with whom he had been friends since his student days ( Studies in Topological Algebra). The doctorate at Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer had previously failed (1929) and Brouwer even raised allegations of plagiarism against Dantzig (he did not get beyond Brouwer's own results and did not work independently) and tried to prevent Dantzig from being appointed as a lecturer at the TH Delft in 1932 . In contrast, van der Waerden defended him in correspondence with Schouten. In 1938 he became associate professor at the TH Delft, in 1940 he became professor there, but was dismissed in the same year after the German occupation of the Netherlands. He moved to Amsterdam, where he became a professor at the University of Amsterdam after the war in 1946, where he was also one of the co-founders of the Mathematical Center .

He mainly worked on topological algebra. He also dealt with differential geometry and the theory of relativity (projective relativity theory with Schouten), electrodynamics, hydrodynamics and thermodynamics and, after the Second World War, with probability theory and especially statistical decision theory.

Van Dantzig introduced the example of a topological group, the dyadic solenoid . The group elements can be represented by infinite sequences q 0 , q 1 , q 2 ,…, with complex numbers on the unit circle q i , for which the following applies for i > 0: q i 2 = q i-1 . The multiplication takes place component by component. The dyadic solenoid is an example of an indivisible continuum (in the Brouwer sense ).

In 1954 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Amsterdam on mathematical problems that arose from the flood disaster in the Netherlands in 1953 . He continued to work on this with his student and assistant Jan Hemelrijk .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martina Schneider: Between two disciplines: BL van der Waerden and the development of quantum mechanics, Springer 2011, pp. 76, 113
personal data
SURNAME Dantzig, David van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1959
Place of death Amsterdam