Karl Menger
Karl Menger (born January 13, 1902 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died October 5, 1985 in Chicago ) was an Austrian mathematician . He was the son of the economist Carl Menger .
Life
Menger worked in the field of algebra , topology , curve and dimension theory and dealt with the general theory of space and spatial structures. He also worked on ethical issues and formal studies of human relationships. The so-called Menger sponge , which was named after him, has become particularly well known . Menger learned from Hans Hahn and received his doctorate in 1924 from the University of Vienna . There he was a member of the Vienna Circle .
Among other things, he dealt with distance geometry, i.e. properties of sets of points that only use the values of their mutual distances. Here he used the first of Arthur Cayley introduced Cayley-Menger determinant .
In 1927 Menger was able to prove a statement from the field of graph theory about the connection between disjoint paths and separating vertex sets in a graph , which became known as Menger's theorem. Furthermore, Menger-Nöbeling's theorem about the embedding of finite-dimensional, compact, metric spaces in suitable Euclidean spaces is associated with his name.
From 1928 to 1936 Menger worked as a university professor for geometry in Vienna and was a member of the Vienna Circle . Between 1937 and 1946 he was professor of mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana (USA), from 1946 professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago .
Another area of research Menger were fuzzy sets ( fuzzy set theory ).
In 1932 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich (Newer Methods and Problems of Geometry).
In 1928 he received the Richard Lieben Prize .
See also
Fonts
- Selecta mathematica. Vol. 1. Edited by Bert Schweizer, Abe Sklar, Karl Sigmund, Peter Gruber, Edmund Hlawka, Ludwig Reich and Leopold Butterer. Springer-Verlag, Vienna, 2002. x + 606 pp. ISBN 3-211-83734-5
- Selecta mathematica. Vol. 2. Edited by Bert Schweizer, Abe Sklar, Karl Sigmund, Peter Gruber, Edmund Hlawka, Ludwig Reich and Leopold Blätter. Springer-Verlag, Vienna, 2003. x + 674 pp. ISBN 3-211-83834-1
- Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle and the Mathematical Colloquium, Kluwer 1994 (Ed. Louise Golland)
- Selected papers in logic and foundations, didactics, economics, Dordrecht: Reidel 1979
- Calculus: a modern approach, Boston: Ginn 1955
- Géométrie générale, Gauthier-Villars 1954
- Curve theory, Teubner 1932
- Dimension theory, Teubner 1928
literature
- Rudolf Fritsch : Menger, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 74 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Heinz D. Kurz : Menger, Karl. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 441-444.
- Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 803f.
Web links
- Literature by and about Karl Menger in the catalog of the German National Library
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Karl Menger. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Obituary in the Notices of the AMS (Seymour Kass)
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Menger, Karl |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian mathematician |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 13, 1902 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |
DATE OF DEATH | 5th October 1985 |
Place of death | Chicago |