Károly Jordan

Károly Jordan

Károly Jordan (also Károly Jordán , Karl Jordan , Charles Jordan ; * December 16, 1871 in Pest ; † December 24, 1959 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian mathematician and statistician , who is best known for his contributions to probability theory and difference calculus .

Life

Jordan, the son of a wealthy leather manufacturer, went to school in Budapest until 1889 and then studied at the École Préparatoire Monge in Paris and the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, where he obtained the degree of engineering degree in chemistry in 1893. After a year at Owens College, Victoria University, Manchester , he accepted a position at the University of Geneva in 1894 , where he received his doctorate in 1895 as a doctor of science physiques ( Dédoublement de l'acide butanoloïque 2. et recherches sur les dérivés actifs de cet acide . Étude numérique sur la formule transformed de MM. Thorpe et Rücker ) and was then a private lecturer in physical chemistry . From 1899 he studied mathematics, astronomy and geophysics at the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest. From 1906 to 1913 he was director of the Budapest Seismological Institute. His interest in the interpretation of seismological and meteorological data led him to the calculation of probability and to mathematics in general. During the First World War he worked as a teacher of mathematics, physics and meteorology at a military academy in Várpalota . After the war he gave a lecture on statistics at the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest and in 1920 he moved to the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where he became a private lecturer in 1923, associate professor in 1933 and full professor in 1940 and lectures on probability theory and statistics until 1950 and calculus of differences held.

In 1927, for example, Jordan found the probability of an event that of events occurring exactly , the sieving formula later named after him ${\displaystyle B_{t}}$ ${\displaystyle n}$ ${\displaystyle A_{1},A_{2},...,A_{n}}$ ${\displaystyle t}$

${\displaystyle P(B_{t})=\sum _{k=t}^{n}(-1)^{k-t}{\binom {k}{t}}S_{k}\quad {\text{ mit }}\quad S_{0}=1\quad {\text{ und }}\quad S_{k}=\!\sum _{1\leq i_{1}<\cdots <i_{k}\leq n}\!P(A_{i_{1}}\cap A_{i_{2}}\cap \,\cdots \,\cap A_{i_{k}}).}$

In 1928 he gave a formula for an interpolation polynomial with equidistant support points, which was often used in practical applications at the time. His monograph on calculus of differences, Calculus of finite differences (1939), was widely used. He summed up fifty years of research and thirty years of teaching in his textbook on probability theory, Fejezetek a klasszikus valószínűségszámításból (1956), the publication of which was delayed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for ten years.

The Budapest Eötvös Society awarded Jordan the Julius König Prize in 1928, Jordan was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1947, and in 1956 he was awarded the Kossuth Prize for his achievements in mathematics .

Jordan married Marie Blumauer in Geneva in 1895, who died in Budapest in 1899, giving birth to her third child. In 1900 he married Marthe Lavallée, with whom he had three more children. Jordan also gained recognition for his sporting activities, especially as a mountaineer in the Tatra Mountains with winter climbs in the years after 1900. During the Hungarian popular uprising , Jordan's apartment was set on fire on October 26, 1956, including his historically valuable library with 5,000 volumes almost 1000 rare issues, destroyed.

Fonts

• with Raymond Fiedler: Contribution à l'étude des courbes convexes fermées et de certaines courbes qui s'y rattachent , Hermann et Fils, Paris 1912 (French; in the Internet archive ; English review )
• Matematikai Statisztika (Mathematical Statistics), Athenaeum, Budapest 1927 (Hungarian)
• Statistique mathématique , Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1927 (expanded French edition of Matematikai Statisztika ; English review )
• Calculus of finite differences , Eggenberger, Budapest and Röttig-Romwalter, Sopron 1939; 2nd edition Chelsea, New York 1947; 3rd edition 1965, ISBN 0-8284-0033-4 (English; with an introduction by Harry C. Carver )
• Fejezetek a klasszikus valószínűségszámításból (Selected Chapters from the Classical Calculus of Probability), Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1956 (Hungarian; completed 1946; Zentralblatt review ); Chapters on the classical calculus of probability , Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1972 (English translation by P. Medgyessy)
• Hétjegyű logaritmustábla (seven- digit logarithm table ), Műszaki Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1961 (Hungarian)

literature

• Charles Jordan 1871–1959 , Acta Mathematica Hungarica 11, March 1960, pp. 1–2 (English; obituary; with picture)
• A. Rényi : Charles Jordan 1871–1959 , Revue de l'Institut International de Statistique 28, 1960, pp. 117–118 (English; obituary)
• DG Kendall : Charles Jordan , The Journal of the London Mathematical Society 35, July 1960, pp. 380–383 (English; obituary)
• L. Takács : Charles Jordan, 1871–1959 , The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 32, 1961, pp. 1–11 (English; obituary; with list of writings; online )
• János Galambos : Károly Jordan in CC Heyde , E. Seneta (ed.): Statisticians of the centuries , Springer-Verlag, New York 2001, ISBN 0-387-95329-9 , pp. 295-298 (English; with picture; online without picture )
• Endre Csáki: Mathematical statistics and Tünde Kántor-Varga: Jordán Károly in János Horváth (ed.): A panorama of Hungarian mathematics in the twentieth century (Volume 1), Springer-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-540-28945-3 , Pp. 491–521 and pp. 580–581 (English)

Web links

• Entry about Károly Jordan in the Hungarian Biographical Lexicon (MEK) of the National Széchényi Library (Hungarian)
• Jordán Károly at Verseny vizsga (Hungarian; with picture)
• Jordán Károly Dr at the Hungarian Mountaineering and Climbing Association, September 19, 2006 (Hungarian; with pictures)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jordan Károly: A valószínűségszámítás alapfogalmai , Mathematikai és Physikai Lapok 34, 1927, pp. 109-136 (Hungarian)
2. ↑ Louis Comtet : Advanced combinatorics: the art of finite and infinite expansions , D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1974, ISBN 90-277-0441-4 , p. 195 (English)
3. ↑ C. Jordan: Sur une formule d'interpolation in Atti del congresso internazionale dei matematici Bologna 1928 (Volume 6), 1929, pp. 157-177 (French)
4. ↑ Charles Jordan: Sur une formule d'interpolation dérivée de la formule d'Everett , Metron 7 No. 3, 1928, pp. 47–51 (French)