Leopold Butterer

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Leopold Karl Butterer (born November 8, 1919 in Vienna ; † August 24, 2004 in Gols ) was an Austrian statistician and probability theorist.

Leopold Butterer, Vienna 1987

Life

Butterer came from a modest background and attended the Hamerlinggymnasium in Vienna (Matura with distinction in 1937) and then a teacher training institute (thanks to the support of an uncle) with the qualification as elementary school teacher in 1938. Since he could not find a teaching position at that time, he studied from 1938 to 1941 at the University of Vienna mathematics, physics and meteorology, especially with Karl Strubecker , Wolfgang Gröbner , Hans Hornich and Karl Mayrhofer . At the university he made friends with Edmund Hlawka . In 1941 he received his doctorate in Vienna with a number-theoretical thesis under Nikolaus Hofreiter (approximation of irrational numbers by numbers from K (i )), was then drafted into the Wehrmacht and initially because of his poor health in the office, but in 1943 at the Mathematical Institute and until 1945 He worked as a mathematician at the Henschel works in Berlin and in 1947 he married Elisabeth Schaffer, with whom he had three sons and a daughter.

After the war he worked as an assistant to Johann Radon in Vienna , where he dealt with analysis and completed his habilitation in 1949 with a thesis on trigonometric series. On the advice of Paul Funk , he turned to mathematical statistics, which at the time were hardly used in Vienna. In 1949 he became a private lecturer at the University of Vienna, in 1950 he became an honorary lecturer in mathematical statistics at the Vienna University of Technology and in 1955 he became an associate professor at the university. In 1956 he became a full professor for actuarial mathematics and statistics at the University of Hamburg . In 1961 he was appointed full professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna as the successor to Radon, and from 1971 as professor of statistics. In 1969/70 he was dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna and from 1971 to 1975 he headed the computing center of the University of Vienna and the Institute for Socio-Economic Development Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In 1990 he retired. He has been a visiting professor at many universities, including the USA (1958/59 in Berkeley, 1962/63 at the Catholic University in Washington DC, 1973 Bowling Green State University), France (Clermont-Ferrand 1975) and Israel ( Technion 1966).

Recently he was increasingly blind. He died in a traffic accident in a car at an open level crossing after trying to get help for his wife who had fallen while walking. He was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery . His collection of mathematical literature is accessible to the public in the Library of Mathematics at the University of Vienna.

meaning

Butterer was instrumental in rebuilding statistics in Germany and Austria after the Second World War. Butterer, who had an analytical background, introduced strict mathematical methods and made the development of statistics abroad (e.g. through Jerzy Neyman and Karl Pearson ) known in German-speaking countries through an important textbook. Among other things, he dealt with stochastic approximation (speed of convergence processes), unbiased estimators, optimality with regard to general loss functions and asymptotic investigations for the occurrence of super-efficient estimators. Encouraged by his colleague Emil Artin in Hamburg, he also examined algebraic structures (groups) in probability theory.

In 1962 he was co-founder (with Hans Richter ) and first editor of the journal for probability theory and related areas .

Awards and memberships (selection)

Butterer was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member since 1970, full member since 1971, its Secretary General from 1975 to 1983), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , the Saxon Academy of Sciences , the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (external member since 1977, later Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences ) and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (1970). He was an honorary doctorate from the University of Clermont-Ferrand (1972). From 1967 to 1971 he was Vice President of the International Statistical Institute in The Hague.

Fonts (selection)

  • Introduction to Mathematical Statistics . Springer, Vienna-New York 1956, 2nd edition 1966.
  • On the convergence behavior of certain trigonometric series , monthly Math. 52 (1948), pp. 162–178 (developed from the habilitation)
  • About non-parametric methods in mathematical statistics , Jber. Deutsche Math. Verein. 61 (1959), pp. 104-126
  • with R. Stender Basic Concepts of Probability Theory , in Heinrich Behnke a . a .: Fundamentals of Mathematics, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962, pp. 96–132
  • Over the sum of Markov's chains on semigroups , monthly f. Math. 71 (1976), pp. 223-260
  • Problems of group theory related to probability theory , Advances in Applied Probability 6 (1974), pp. 188-259

He was co-editor of Selecta by Karl Menger (Springer Verlag 2002/3), the collected works by Johann Radon (Birkhäuser 1987), by Hans Hahn (Springer 1995–1997) and wrote the foreword to the collected essays by Erwin Schrödinger at Vieweg ( 1984). He was also co-editor of a Gödel Symposium in Salzburg in 1983 (Bibliopolis, Naples 1987)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leopold Butterer in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
  2. ^ Grave site Leopold Butterer , Vienna, Zentralfriedhof, Group 62, Group Extension A, Row 16, No. 3.
  3. ↑ Friedrich Pukelsheim : Leopold Butterer November 8, 1919– August 24, 2004 ( PDF file; 128 kB), Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 2004, pp. 317–320.
personal data
SURNAME Butterflies, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butterfly, Leopold Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 2004
Place of death Gols