Jan Schouten (mathematician)
Jan Arnoldus Schouten (born August 28, 1883 in Amsterdam (Nieuweramstel), † January 20, 1971 in Epe , Netherlands ) was a Dutch mathematician who was particularly concerned with differential geometry and is considered one of the founders of the tensor calculus .
life and work
Schouten came from a well-known family of shipbuilders and studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Delft and worked in this profession for several years. After an inheritance that made him independent, he began studying mathematics at the University of Leiden , where he received his doctorate in 1914 on tensor analysis (which he called "direct analysis of affinors"). In the same year he became a mathematics professor in Delft. In 1943 he resigned from his professorship and withdrew (in the same year he divorced). From 1948 to 1953 he was Professor and Director of the Mathematical Research Center in Amsterdam. Schouten was also a smart investor and managed the finances of the Dutch mathematical society. Like others before him, he had violent arguments with the topologist and intuitionist Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer , e. B. on the publication of the journal “Compositio Mathematica”.
Schouten expanded what he called the Ricci calculus of tensor analysis and also applied it in physics ( general theory of relativity , he wrote, for example, an essay with the cosmologist Alexander Alexandrowitsch Friedmann on unified field theories and corresponded with Wolfgang Pauli ). He discovered the Levi-Civita connection in Riemannian geometry independently of Tullio Levi-Civita in 1915 , but published his discovery a year after Levi-Civita. In a subsequent priority dispute, his compatriot Brouwer even took a stand against him. In the 1920s and 1930s, after Hubert Goenner , he assumed a central mediator role between mathematicians and physicists in the Albert Einstein and other investigated generalizations of the theory of relativity (unified field theories).
He also examined projective and conformal differential geometry (he discovered the Kähler manifolds two years before Erich Kähler ).
In 1922 his book Der Ricci-Kalkül about tensor analysis was published, in which he used the more elegant methods of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Levi-Civita instead of his initially very complicated notation - Schouten is said to have later said to Hermann Weyl that he could be the author of these works - namely his early work on the tensor calculus - strangle.
Schouten was President of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in 1954.
His doctoral students included Albert Nijenhuis and Dirk Struik , who spread Schouten's ideas, particularly in the USA. Even John Haantjes was his student, assistant and close collaborator.
Fonts
- Basics of vector and affinor analysis. Teubner, Leipzig 1914.
- On the Determination of the Principle Laws of Statistical Astronomy. Kirchner, Amsterdam 1918.
- The Ricci Calculus. Julius Springer, Berlin 1924, English 2nd edition 1954
- with Dirk Struik: Introduction to the New Methods of Differential Geometry. 2 volumes, Noordhoff, Groningen 1935–38.
- with W. Van der Kulk Pfaff's Problem and Its Generalizations. Chelsea Publishing Co., New York 1969.
- Tensor Analysis for Physicists. 2nd edition, Dover Publications, New York, 1989.
literature
- Albert Nijenhuis: JA Schouten: A Master at Tensors. In: Nieuw archief voor wiskunde. 3. R., Vol. 20, 1972, ISSN 0028-9825 , pp. 1-19, and his article Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
- Karin Reich : The development of the tensor calculus. From the absolute differential calculus to the theory of relativity. 1979 (Munich, Univ., B, 1979), (book trade edition: Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 1994, ISBN 3-7643-2814-2 (= Science Networks, historical Studies 11)), (Review by Struik in: Historia Mathematica. Vol . 22, 1995, ISSN 0315-0860 , p. 323).
- Dirk J. Struik: Schouten, Levi-Civita and the Emergence of Tensor Calculus. In: David E. Rowe , John McCleary (Eds.): History of Modern Mathematics. Volume 2: Institutions and Applications. Academic Press, Boston MA et al. 1989, ISBN 0-12-599662-4 , pp. 99-105.
- Dirk J. Struik: JA Schouten and the tensor calculus. In: Nieuw Archief for Wiskunde. 3. R., Vol. 26, 1978, pp. 96-107.
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Jan Schouten. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Hubert Goenner zu Schouten and the theory of relativity in the Living Reviews, 2004
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hubert Goenner On the history of unified field theories , Living Reviews, Chapter 9 ( Memento of the original of March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Jan Schouten in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schouten, Jan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schouten, Jan Arnoldus (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch mathematician and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 28, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Amsterdam |
| DATE OF DEATH | 20th January 1971 |
| Place of death | Epe , Netherlands |