Dietrich Morgenstern

Dietrich Morgenstern in 1972 at the Mathematical Research Institute in Oberwolfach

Dietrich Joachim Kurth Morgenstern (born September 26, 1924 in Ratzeburg ; † June 24, 2007 in Darmstadt ) was a German mathematician who was particularly concerned with mathematical stochastics .

Live and act

On April 1, 1942, one day after graduating from high school in Berlin-Zehlendorf , Morgenstern was drafted into the Wehrmacht. After being wounded twice, he was taken prisoner by the Americans. From this he returned to Berlin on July 1, 1946, where he was able to begin his studies at the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg in autumn, which he completed in 1950 with degrees as an engineer and a mathematician. With Werner Schmeidler he received his doctorate in 1952 with the dissertation "Contributions to nonlinear functional analysis". In 1954/55 he was a research fellow at the Graduate Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (USA); there he received his Ph.D. from Eberhard Hopf with a thesis entitled “Analytical Studies related to the Maxwell-Boltzmann Equation”. PhD. In the same year he completed his habilitation at the Technical University of Berlin with the thesis "Singular Perturbation Theory of Partial Differential Equations". From 1956 he was an assistant at the Free University of Berlin; In 1957 he received a teaching position / Scientific Council position for "Mathematical Methods of Mechanics" at the Free University of Berlin.

In the winter semester of 1959/60, Morgenstern accepted a call for an extraordinary professorship at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, which was connected with the management of the newly founded Institute for Mathematical Statistics . In 1962 he followed a call to a newly established full professorship for mathematical statistics at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg ; there he built the Institute for Mathematical Stochastics. In the 1971 summer semester he accepted a call to a - again newly created - chair for mathematical stochastics at the Technical University of Hanover . He worked there until his retirement in 1986. Morgenstern was a member of the advisory board of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach for many years .

Morgenstern's scientific work initially focused on functional analysis and theoretical mechanics . His results on approximation methods in classical mechanics were also included in the textbook on theoretical mechanics that he wrote together with István Szabó. From 1956 he turned to mathematical stochastics ; in particular in distribution theory he made a wealth of interesting statements. In particular, his name remains associated with the two-dimensional "Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern" probability distributions. He was a master of elegant evidence; its aim was to produce interesting individual results rather than a general theory.

His students include Hans-Herrmann Bock, Norbert Henze and Viktor G. Kurotschka.

Dietrich Morgenstern 2004

Fonts

with István Szabó: lectures on theoretical mechanics , basics. Math. Wiss., Volume 112, Berlin: Springer, 1961
Introduction to probability theory and mathematical statistics , basics. Math. Wiss., Volume 124, Berlin: Springer 1964, second verb. 1968 edition
with Volker Mammitzsch : Probability calculation and mathematical statistics , in Robert Sauer , Istvan Szabo The mathematical tools of the engineer , Springer Verlag, Volume 4, 1970

A complete list of Morgenstern's writings can be found in the obituary written by L. Baringhaus, R. Grübel and N. Henze (annual report DMV 2008).

literature

Ludwig Baringhaus, Rudolf Grübel, Norbert Henze: Dietrich Morgenstern 9/26/1924–6/24/2007 , in: Annual Report DMV, Volume 110, 2008, pp. 101–113
Norbert Schmitz : 1959-2009. 50 years of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics at the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster . Institute for Mathematical Statistics, Münster 2009 ( full text )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Morgenstern, Dietrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Morgenstern, Dietrich Joachim Kurth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	September 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ratzeburg
DATE OF DEATH	June 24, 2007
Place of death	Darmstadt