Murray H. Protter
Murray Harold Protter (born February 13, 1918 in Brooklyn , † May 1, 2008 in Berkeley ) was an American mathematician who dealt with partial differential equations and wrote several analysis textbooks.
Life
Protter studied mathematics at the University of Michigan (master's degree in 1937) and received his doctorate in 1946 with Lipman Bers at Brown University ("Generalized Spherical Harmonics"). During World War II, he worked in applied mathematics at the Vaught aircraft factory in Stratford, Connecticut . There he calculated the resonance frequencies for the "wing flutter" of military aircraft, which are often responsible for crashes. From 1947 to 1951 he was an assistant professor at Syracuse University , then from 1951 to 1953 at the Institute for Advanced Study . From 1953 he was at the University of California, Berkeley , where he was a professor until his retirement from 1988. From 1962 to 1965 he was chairman of the mathematics faculty there (and again from retirement from 1990 to 1992 deputy chairman) and also from 1981 to 1983 managing director of the Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science. In 1959 and 1967 he was a professor at Berkeley Miller.
He dealt in particular with maximal principles in the theory of partial differential equations and with partial differential equations of the mixed type, as they are important, for example, in the transition area to supersonic flight (transsonic flow). He also worked as an applied mathematician, in addition to his work in the aircraft industry during World War II, as a consultant to Shell on mathematical problems of interpreting seismic data in oil exploration.
He wrote widespread analysis textbooks with Charles Morrey in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. With a circulation of over 1 million copies, Calculus with Analytic Geometry was the second best-selling analysis textbook there. In the 1960s he built the math faculty in Berkeley into one of the leading in the country, advocating the self-paced learning method (self-paced learning) as a math teacher. He was very successful in this and received its highest honor (Berkeley Citation) from the University of Berkeley.
He was Treasurer of the American Mathematical Society from 1968 to 1972 and also long-time editor of the book reviews column in the Bulletin of the AMS.
He was married to Ruth Rotman Protter and had a son ( Philip Protter , a mathematician who works in Operations Research and is a professor at Cornell University ) and a daughter.
Fonts
- with Charles Morrey: Calculus with Analytic Geometry: A first Course , Addison-Wesley 1964
- same: Intermediate Calculus , Springer 1971, 1985
- same: A First Course in Real Analysis , Springer, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, 1976, 1997
- same: Modern Mathematical Analysis , Addison-Wesley 1966
- the same: Calculus for College Students , Addison-Wesley 1967
- same: Analytic Geometry , Addison-Wesley 1975
- Basic Elements of Real Analysis , Springer 1998
- with Hans Weinberger: Maximum Principles in Differential Equations , 1967, Springer 1999
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Protter, Murray H. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Protter, Murray Harold (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 13, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brooklyn |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 1, 2008 |
| Place of death | Berkeley |