Rufus Bowen

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Rufus Bowen

Robert Edward "Rufus" Bowen (born February 23, 1947 in Vallejo , California , † July 30, 1978 in Santa Rosa , California) was an American mathematician who dealt with graph theory and dynamic systems .

Bowen grew up in Fairfield and wrote his first mathematical works when he was 17. They dealt with graph theory; for example, he determined with a computer all minimal triangle graphs with up to 14 corner points and all triangulations of the sphere with up to twelve corner points. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his PhD in 1970 from Stephen Smale with a dissertation on Topological Entropy and Axiom .

In the same year he became a faculty member. In 1974 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Vancouver ( Symbolic dynamics for hyperbolic flows ). Also in 1974 he received a research grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ( Sloan Research Fellowship ). In 1975 his book Equilibrium States and the Ergodic Theory of Anosov Diffeomorphisms appeared in the Lecture Notes in Mathematics at Springer-Verlag. In 1977 he became a professor at Berkeley, but died a year later at the age of only 31 of a cerebral haemorrhage (as a result of an aneurysm ) while on vacation. At that time he was already a central figure in his field of work. He carried out pioneering investigations into symbolic dynamics, invariant measures, topological entropy and Markov decompositions.

In his memory, Bowen Lectures have been held every two years at the University of California, Berkeley since 1981 (donated by an anonymous former student of Bowen).

Lai-Sang Young is one of his PhD students .

Works

  • Topological Entropy and Axiom . Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1970.
  • Jean-René Chazottes (Ed.): Equilibrium States and the Ergodic Theory of Anosov Diffeomorphisms . (Lecture Notes in Mathematics; Volume 470). 2. through Edition. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-77605-5 .

literature

  • Dennis Sullivan: Obituary in: Publications Math. IHES , Vol. 50, 1979, p. 7.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bowen, Rufus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bowen, Robert Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Vallejo
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1978
Place of death Santa Rosa