Lélio Gama
Lélio Itapuambyra Gama (born August 29, 1892 in Rio de Janeiro , † July 21, 1981 ibid.) Was a Brazilian mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist. He was the first director of the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) from 1952 to 1965 and director of the national observatory in Rio from 1951 to 1967.
life and work
Gama graduated from the Rio Engineering School (Polytechnic) in 1914 and also worked as an engineer for a while before becoming an astronomer at the Rio Observatory. He was also a professor at the Polytechnic. He researched differential geometry, but then turned to astronomy because of the isolated position of mathematics in Brazil at the time. Manfredo do Carmo highlights a work on geodesics on ellipsoids of revolution and spheroids (with application in geodesy), which he completed as a habilitation in 1929 for the chair of astronomy at the Polytechnic.
From 1956 to 1964 he was a member of the Committee for Astronomical Time and Earth Rotation of the International Astronomical Union . He improved the Talcott method for zenith telescopes .
A street in Rio (with some of the tallest skyscrapers in the city) is named after him.
Fonts
- Notion de proximité et espaces à structure spheroidale, American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 67, 1945, pp. 42-58 (his concept of spheroidal spaces is the same as uniform spaces according to André Weil , introduced in 1937)
- Limits d'ensemble dans les espaces abstraits, Summa Brasiliensis Mathematicae 1, 1945/46
literature
- Manfredo do Carmo Boletim da Sociedade Brasileira de Matematica, Volume 3, 1972, pp. 160-164
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gama, Lélio |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gama, Lélio Itapuambyra (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Brazilian mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 29, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rio de Janeiro |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 21, 1981 |
| Place of death | Rio de Janeiro |