Hugo Steinhaus

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Hugo Dionizy stone house
Honorary doctorate from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan dedicated to Hugo Dionizy Steinhaus

Hugo Dionizy Steinhaus (born January 14, 1887 in Jasło , Austria-Hungary , † February 25, 1972 in Breslau ) was a Polish mathematician . He was one of the founders and leading scientists of the Lviv mathematical school .

Life

Steinhaus studied mathematics at the University of Lviv and in Göttingen , where he in 1911 with the work New applications of the Dirichlet principle for David Hilbert doctorate . In 1917 he completed his habilitation in Lviv . In 1918 he published the much-acclaimed work Additive and Steady Functional Operations . In 1920 he became a professor at the university in Lemberg, which was then Polish and now Ukrainian. Together with Stefan Banach (whom he "discovered" as a mathematician , which was his greatest achievement in mathematics after Steinhaus), Stanisław Marcin Ulam and other scientists, Steinhaus dealt with functional analysis .

Steinhaus was Jewish and survived the atrocities of the National Socialists and the German occupation by hiding with his wife under the name Grzegorz Krohabenny from July 1941 and under all circumstances avoided being kept on lists of any kind. In his diary entries, in which this period is also vividly described, he wrote in November 1945: "I learned that the Ministry had been looking for me during the war to help me. But they couldn't find me. Thank God!" .

Steinhaus moved to Wroclaw in 1945, where he became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wroclaw and played a key role in the reconstruction of the university. In 1952 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences ( Polska Akademia Nauk ). In 1919 Steinhaus founded the forerunner of the later Polish Mathematical Society in Cracow.

Steinhaus published a total of approx. 250 works. These included popular books on mathematics such as Kalejdoskop matematyczny (Kaleidoskop der Mathematik, first 1938), which has been translated into ten languages. In addition to functional analysis, Steinhaus mainly worked in applied mathematics and statistics.

Steinhaus developed the Steinhaus-Moser notation for very large numbers with Leo Moser . The Banach-Steinhaus theorem, which is fundamental for functional analysis, is associated with his name. He founded Studia Mathematica with Stefan Banach (1929), and Zastosowania matematyki (Applications of Mathematics, 1953).

The painter, logician and philosopher Leon Chwistek was his brother-in-law.

Steinhaus was a staunch atheist. Mark Kac reported the following anecdote. Once only Kac and another student were in the lecture of Steinhaus, but he still held them with the words that three members made up a college (Tres facit collegium). But even when the other student dropped out, Steinhaus continued the lecture. When asked what about the rule of three, he answered that God is always present.

Fonts (selection)

  • Czym jest, a czym nie jest matematyka (What is mathematics and what is not, 1923).
  • with Stefan Kaczmarz : Theory of Orthogonal Series , Mathematical Monographs 6, Warsaw 1936, 2nd edition: New York: Chelsea Publ. 1951
  • Kalejdoskop matematyczny , Lwów, Książnica Atlas 1938,
    • English edition Kaleidoscope of Mathematics , New York: G. Stechert 1938,
    • later English editions as: Mathematical Snapshots , Oxford University Press 1950, 3rd edition 1969 (preface Morris Kline ), Dover 2011
    • German translation: Kaleidoscope of Mathematics , Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1959
  • Tablica liczb przetasowanych czterocyfrowych: table of shuffled four-digit numbers , Warsaw 1954
  • Taksonomia wrocławska (A Wroclaw Taxonomy; with others, 1951).
  • with K. Florek, J. Łukaszewicz, J. Perkal, S. Zubrzycki: Sur la liaison et la division des points d'un ensemble fini , Colloquium Mathematicum, Volume 2, 1951, pp. 282–285, eudml
  • Sto zadań (A Hundred Problems, 1958).
  • One Hundred Problems In Elementary Mathematics , Basic Books 1964, Dover 2016 (preface by Martin Gardner )
    • One Hundred Problems in Elementary Analysis , Pergamon Press 1963
    • German edition: 100 tasks: a hundred problems from elementary mathematics , Harri Deutsch 1968
  • 100 new tasks , Harri Deutsch 1973
  • Orzeł czy reszka ( Heads or Tails , 1961), Warsaw, PWN 2010.
  • Słownik racjonalny (A Rational Dictionary, 1980).
  • Wspomnienia i zapiski (Memories and Notes, 1992, 2010)
    • English edition: Mathematician for all seasons: recollections and notes , 2 volumes, Birkhäuser 2015, 2016

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ O'Connor, Robertson, Steinhaus Article, McTutor Archives
  2. ^ Hugo Steinhaus: Memories and Records II , Neisse-Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-940310-28-6 , page 97
  3. ↑ Steven Krantz: Mathematical Apocrypha, MAA 2002, p. 202
  4. ↑ http://prac.im.pwr.wroc.pl/~hugo/HSC/hsc_ang.html
  5. ↑ http://prac.im.pwr.edu.pl/~hugo/HSC/imprezy/rok.html
  6. ↑ https://www.alumni-goettingen.de/termine/archiv/ehrung-hugo-steinhaus/
personal data
SURNAME Stone house, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stone house, Hugo Dionizy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Jasło
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1972
Place of death Wroclaw