Paul Butzer

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Paul Leo Butzer (born April 15, 1928 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) is a German mathematician who deals with analysis ( approximation theory , harmonic analysis ).

Live and act

Butzer is the son of an engineer, his mother studied mathematics at RWTH Aachen . As opponents of the National Socialists, the parents left Germany with their children in 1937 and went to England. During the Second World War they moved to Canada, where Butzer went to school in Montreal and studied mathematics at Loyola College (later Concordia University ), which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1948. He then studied at the University of Toronto with Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter and William Tutte, among others, and received his doctorate in 1951 with George G. Lorentz (On Bernstein Polynomials ). In 1952 he became a lecturer and then an assistant professor at McGill University . In 1955/56 he lived in Paris and then in Mainz. He decided to stay in Germany, did his habilitation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , taught in Würzburg and from 1958 at the RWTH Aachen. In 1962 he was given a chair there (at the same time he was offered a professorship in Groningen). In 1963 he began to organize international conferences on approximation theory at the Mathematical Research Institute Oberwolfach (later with Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy ).

In addition to approximation theory and its connections to Fourier analysis and to semigroups of operators in Banach spaces and with integral transformations, he also dealt with probability theory (central limit theorem and related convergence questions), sampling theory and signal analysis.

He also dealt with the history of mathematics (especially in connection with Aachen), for example Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet , Eduard Helly , Eugène Catalan , Pafnuti Lwowitsch Tschebyschow , Charles-Jean de La Vallée Poussin , history of Splines , Otto Blumenthal , mathematics in Carolingian times and Elwin Bruno Christoffel (about whom he edited a book).

Butzer is a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Liège and the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Mathematical Society in Hamburg . He has three honorary doctorates (Liège, York, Timișoara).

Paul Butzer is the brother of Karl W. Butzer .

Fonts

  • with Hubert Berens : Semi-groups of Operators and Approximation , Basic Teachings of Mathematical Sciences , Springer Verlag 1967
  • with Hermann Schulte: An operator calculus for the solution of ordinary and partial difference equation systems of functions of discrete variables and its applications , Cologne, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag 1965
  • with Rolf Joachim Nessel Fourier Analysis and Approximation , Academic Press, Vol. 1 (One-dimensional Theory), 1971
  • with Walter Trebels: Hilbert transformation, broken integration and differentiation , Cologne, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag 1968
  • with Karl Scherer: Approximation Processes and Intepolation Methods , BI University Pocket Book , Mannheim 1968
  • with W. Oberdörster: Representation sentences for limited linear functionals in connection with Hausdorff, Stieltjes and Hamburger moment problems , Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag 1975
  • Edited with Dietrich Lohrmann : Science in Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times , Birkhäuser 1993
  • Ed. With Walter Oberschelp , Max Kerner : Karl der Grosse and his aftermath: 1200 years of culture and science in Europe , 2 volumes, Turnhout: Brepols 1997/98
  • Mathematics in west and east from the fifth to tenth centuries: an overview , in: PL Butzer, Dietrich Lohrmann (Hrsg.), Science in Western and Eastern civilization in Carolingian times, Basel 1993, pp. 443-481
  • with Karl W. Butzer: Mathematics at Charlemagne's court and its transmission , in: Catherine Cubitt (Hrsg.), Court culture in the early middle ages, Turnhout 2003, pp. 77-89
  • The mathematicians of the Aachen-Liège area from the Carolingian to the late Ttonian epoch , in: Annalen des Historisches Verein für den Niederrhein, Volume 178, 1976, pp. 7-30
  • Edited with F. Féher: EB Christoffel, the influence of his work on mathematics and the physical sciences , Birkhäuser 1981
  • with Francois Jongmans: PL Chebyshev (1821–1894): a guide to his life and work , Chair of Mathematics A, RWTH Aachen, 1998
  • Dirichlet and his role in the founding of mathematical physics , Chair A for Mathematics, RWTH Aachen 1983

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Butzer, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butzer, Paul Leo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim an der Ruhr