Jacob Willem Cohen
Jacob Willem "Wim" Cohen (born August 27, 1923 in Leeuwarden , † November 12, 2000 in The Hague ) was a Dutch mathematician and engineer .
Life
As a Jew, Cohen had to go into hiding in occupied Holland during World War II and taught himself so much mathematics and science through self-study that he was able to quickly complete a mechanical engineering degree in Delft in 1949 after the war . He received his doctorate cum laude in Delft in 1955 under Warner T. Koiter (On stress calculations in helicoidal shells and propeller blades) on the calculation of stresses in ship propellers and from 1950 worked at Philips Telecommunications in Hilversum in the telephone sector (for example, theoretical investigation of the overload of Telephone networks). In 1957 he became professor for pure and applied mathematics and mechanics at the Technical University of Delft and from 1973 until his retirement in 1988 he was professor for operations research at the University of Utrecht . He is buried in Haifa .
He dealt with queuing theory and wrote a monograph about it in 1969, which became a standard work. In Utrecht he dealt with two-dimensional random walks and their application to queues (using his knowledge of complex analysis ) and communication in computer networks . He also researched probability distributions with fat tails .
He received the AKZO Prize from the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen , the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ITC (International Teletraffic Congress) and was an honorary doctor of the Technion .
literature
- Onno J. Boxma, R. Syski (Eds.): Queuing Theory and its Applications. Liber Amicorum for JW Cohen. CWI Monographs 7, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1988.
- OJ Boxma, R. Syski: Obituary: Jacob Willem Cohen , J. Appl. Probability, Vol. 38, 2001, pp. 1-5.
Fonts
- The single server queue, North Holland 1969, 2nd edition 1982
- On regenerative processes in queuing theory, Springer Verlag 1976
- with Onno J. Boxma: Boundary value problems in queuing systems, Elsevier, 1983
- Analysis of random walks, IOS Press, 1992
Web links
- Biography of Onno Boxma
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Jacob Willem Cohen. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jacob Willem Cohen in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cohen, Jacob Willem |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cohen, Wim |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch mathematician and engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 27, 1923 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leeuwarden |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 12, 2000 |
| Place of death | The hague |