RH Bing

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RH Bing , sometimes erroneously Rudolph H. Bing , (born October 20, 1914 in Oakwood , Texas , † April 28, 1986 in Austin , Texas) was an American mathematician who dealt with general topology and (especially three-dimensional) geometric topology busy.

Life

As a first name Bing only had the initials RH, which he preferred to write "RH". He grew up as the son of a teacher couple (but his father later became a farmer). Bing initially studied at Southwest Texas State Teachers College and took the teacher exam in 1935. He was then a high school teacher in Texas for four years. On the side, he continued studying mathematics at the University of Texas (for the reason that he was paid higher as a teacher) and got his master's degree in 1938 . In the same year he married. In 1943 he became an instructor at the University of Texas, where he received his doctorate in 1945 with Robert Lee Moore . In 1949/50 he was at the University of Virginia and then first associate professor and then professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison . In 1957/58, 1962/63 and 1967 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study . In 1973 he went back to the University of Texas at Austin , where he was chairman of the mathematics faculty from 1975 to 1977 and retired in 1985.

Bing was since 1965 a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1970 to 1980 in their council) and 1966 and 1978 representative of the USA in the International Mathematical Union . 1977/78 he was president of the American Mathematical Society and 1963/64 of the Mathematical Association of America . From 1967 to 1969 he was chairman of the mathematics department on the National Research Council and from 1968 to 1975 on the National Science Board. In 1962 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm ( Embedding surfaces in 3-manifolds ) and in 1950 in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . In 1965 he was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1980 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

plant

Bing is known for numerous works on geometric topology (especially in the 1950s and 1960s), about which he wrote a comprehensive textbook in 1983. He also tried the Poincaré conjecture several times and in 1958 proved in this context that compact 3-manifolds are homeomorphic to the 3-sphere if and only if every simple closed curve in them can be enclosed by a 3-sphere. In 1957 he showed that two-dimensional surfaces in three-dimensional space can be approximated by polyhedron surfaces. In 1959 he gave a simpler proof (than that of Edwin Moise ) of the triangulability of 3-manifolds, using his side approximation theorem. Many example constructions and methods from topology are named after him (e.g. Bing's Sticky Foot Topology, Bing's Sling, Bing's Hooked Rug, Bing Shrinking) or named by him (e.g. House with two rooms, Dogbone space). In the general topology he characterized metrizable spaces in 1951 ("Metrization of topological spaces", Canadian Journal of Mathematics 1951), in the Bing-Nagata-Smirnow metrization theorem ( Jun-iti Nagata and Juri Michailowitsch Smirnow published about this around the same time). One of his first successes was his solution to the "Kline Sphere Characterization Problem" of 1946 (Bulletin AMS, p. 644), which states that a metric space divided into two parts by any simple closed curve, but not by any two Points, is homeomorphic to the 2-sphere.

Fonts

  • The geometric topology of 3-Manifolds, AMS 1983
  • Collected Papers, 2 volumes, AMS 1988

Web links

References

  1. ↑ Information on Rudolph H. Bing in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , accessed on March 29, 2019.
  2. ↑ MacTutor History of Mathematics, see web link. His name was Rupert Henry after his father, which his mother thought was too British for Texas.
personal data
SURNAME Bing, RH
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Oakwood , Texas
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1986
Place of death Austin , Texas