Hans Lewy

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Hans Lewy (1975)

Hans Lewy (born October 20, 1904 in Breslau ; † August 23, 1988 in Berkeley , California ) was a mathematician of German descent who worked in the USA after his emigration . Lewy occupied himself with the analysis of partial differential equations throughout his life and received several prestigious awards for his work.

life and work

Lewy studied in Göttingen from 1922 and received his doctorate there under Richard Courant in 1926 on an approach to the numerical solution of boundary value problems . In 1927 he received a position as a private lecturer there and in 1928, together with Courant and Friedrichs, published the work On Partial Difference Equations in Mathematical Physics , in which the CFL condition named after the three , a fundamental stability criterion in the numerics of time-dependent partial differential equations , was introduced.

In 1929 he was a Rockefeller Fellow in Rome and in 1930 in Paris. After the handover of power to the NSDAP in 1933, Lewy was dismissed. He emigrated to the United States via France , was initially at Brown University and became a lecturer in 1935 , assistant professor in 1937, associate professor in 1939 and professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1945 . In 1972 he retired.

Lewy dealt with the theory of water waves and in 1957 gave an influential example of a simple partial differential equation without a solution, which surprised mathematicians at the time. This example, also known as Lewy's example , shows that the Malgrange-Ehrenpreis theorem about the existence of a solution with constant coefficients cannot be extended to polynomials as coefficients.

For his work he was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 1979 and the Wolf Prize in 1985. In 1950 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Cambridge (Massachusetts) (Developments at the confluence of analytic boundary conditions). He was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1964), the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (1979), the Accademia dei Lincei and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985).

David is one of his PhD students .

literature

  • Constance Reid : Hans Lewy - 1904-1988 . In: Michael Atiyah u. a .: Miscellanea Mathematica , Springer Verlag, 1991.
  • D. Kinderlehrer (Ed.): Selecta Hans Lewy , 2 volumes, Birkhäuser, Boston, Massachusetts 2001 (with contributions by François Treves , Louis Nirenberg , Jean Leray , the contribution by Constance Reid and by Hans Lewy himself)
  • Donald J. Albers, GL Alexanderson, Constance Reid: More Mathematical People - Contemporary Conversations , Academic Press, 1994.
  • Lewy, Hans , in: Joseph Walk (Ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 232

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathematische Annalen, Volume 100, 1928, pp. 32-74, online
  2. ↑ Entry in International Bibliographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945, Saur, 1983
  3. ^ Hans Lewy: An example of a smooth linear partial differential equation without solution . In: The Annals of Mathematics . Vol. 66, No. 1 (July 1957), pp. 155-158.
  4. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 150.
  5. ↑ Hans Lewy in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
personal data
SURNAME Lewy, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION mathematician of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1988
Place of death Berkeley , California , USA