Klaus Matthes

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Klaus Matthes

Klaus Matthes (born  January 20, 1931 in Berlin ; †  March 9, 1998 there ) was a German mathematician . From 1964 to 1968 he worked as a professor at the University of Jena , including from 1966 as dean. From 1969 he worked at the Central Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, which later became the Academy of Sciences of the GDR , which he headed as director from 1973. From 1981 to 1991 he was director of the Academy Institute for Mathematics. He devoted himself in particular to questions from probability theory .

Life

Klaus Matthes was born in Berlin in 1931 and studied mathematics at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1948 to 1954 . He then worked as an assistant at the Humboldt University from 1956 to 1961, where he also obtained his doctorate under Heinrich Grell and Kurt Schröder in 1958 and habilitated in 1963 under Willi Rinow and Rolf Reissig . A year earlier he had taken over the provisional management of the Institute for Mathematics at the Technical University of Ilmenau . From 1964 to 1968 he then worked as a professor of mathematics at the University of Jena , where he also served as dean of the faculty of mathematics and natural sciences from 1966 .

In 1969 he moved to the Berlin-based Central Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, later the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW). From 1970 he acted as deputy head of the mathematics institute complex in the academy's research community. A year later he was first deputy director and then in 1973 director of the Berlin Central Institute. From 1981 to 1991 he headed the Academy Institute for Mathematics, which from 1985 bore the name "Karl Weierstrass Institute for Mathematics" and was re-established as the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics after German reunification .

Klaus Matthes was married to the dramaturge Gisela Weisse and the father of two sons. He died in 1998 in his hometown of Berlin.

Scientific work

The focus of the scientific work of Klaus Matthes was probability theory. He dealt in particular with point processes and their application in the field of queuing theory as well as with branching processes. In the queuing theory, which he called "service theory", he studied so-called loss systems such as the Erlang and Engset model. He was the first to apply point process methods at a high level. Klaus Matthes can be seen as the founder of the theory of marked and infinitely divisible point processes. Together with Johannes Kerstan and Joseph Mecke, he was one of the leading personalities of the East German point process school, which is still very influential today, especially in stochastic modeling such as stochastic geometry .

In the context of limit theorems in the superposition of point processes, he came across the problem of the unlimited divisibility of point processes - following a suggestion by Boris Wladimirowitsch Gnedenko , which he had given in 1960 in a lecture at the sixth all-union congress on probability theory and statistics in Vilnius . He and his colleagues systematically investigated their structure, which culminated in the monograph Infinitely Divisible Point Processes. It was translated into English ( Infinitely Divisible Point Processes ) in 1978 and into Russian in 1982. Closely related to this were spatial branching processes and the investigation of equilibrium distributions and their structure, which Matthes dealt with until the end of his life.

The "Euler Lectures in Sanssouci" that are still held today are based on Matthes' initiative. This event, a mathematics lecture in a festive setting, is jointly supported by the Berlin and Potsdam Mathematical Institutes.

Awards

Klaus Matthes was a corresponding member of the GDR Academy of Sciences from 1974 and a full member from 1980 to 1992. In addition, he received the GDR National Prize in 1971 and the Bronze Patriotic Order of Merit in 1983 .

Fonts

  • On the theory of operating processes. In: Transactions of the 3rd. Prague Conference on Information Theory. Prague, pp. 513-528.
  • Stationary random point sequences, I. In: Annual report of the German Mathematicians Association. 66/1963, ISSN  0012-0456 , pp. 66-79.
  • Stationary random point sequences, II. In: Annual report of the German Mathematicians Association. 66/1963, pp. 106-118.
  • Co-author: Generalizations of the Erlang and Engset formulas. Academy, Berlin 1967.
  • Co-author: Generalizations of a theorem by Dobruschin I. In: Mathematische Nachrichten. Volume 47, 1970, ISSN  0025-584X , pp. 183-244.
  • Co-author: Generalizations of a theorem by Dobruschin III. In: Mathematical News. Volume 50, 1971, pp. 99-139.
  • Co-author: Infinitely divisible point processes. Academy, Berlin 1974 (series of mathematical textbooks and monographs. Volume 27).
  • Co-author: Infinitely divisible Point Processes. Wiley & Sons, Chichester 1978 ( Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics. )
  • Co-author: Безгранично делимые точечные процессы , translation from English, Mir, Moscow 1982.
  • Critical branching processes with general phase space, XI. In: Mathematical News. Volume 128, 1986, pp. 141-149.
  • Co-author: Equilibrium Distributions of Branching Processes. Akademie, Berlin 1988 ( Mathematical Research series . 42, ISBN 3-05-500453-1 .)
  • Co-author: Equilibrium Distributions of Age Dependent Galton Watson Processes I. In: Mathematische Nachrichten. Volume 156. 1992, pp. 233-267.
  • Co-author: Equilibrium Distributions of Age Dependent Galton Watson processes II. In: Mathematische Nachrichten. Tape. 160. 1993, pp. 313-324.
  • Co-author: Recurrence of Ancestral Lines and Offspring Trees in Time Stationary Branching Populations. Berlin 1994.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Matthes, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1998
Place of death Berlin