Shizuo Kakutani
Shizuo Kakutani ( Japanese 角 谷 静 夫 , Kakutani Shizuo ; born August 28, 1911 in Osaka Prefecture , † August 17, 2004 in New Haven , Connecticut) was a Japanese-American mathematician.
Kakutani attended Tōhoku University , where Tatsujiro Shimizu was his supervisor. Earlier in his career, he spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study at the invitation of Hermann Weyl . During his stay he also met John von Neumann .
During the Second World War , Kakutani taught at Osaka University . He returned to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1948 and received a professorship from Yale in 1949, which he held until his retirement in 1982.
The fixed-point theorem of Kakutani is a generalization of Brouwer's fixed-point theorem . Its most important application is the proof of the existence of the Nash equilibrium in game theory . He also made contributions to the characterization of positive linear forms, which is why the Riesz-Markow-Kakutani representation theorem bears his name.
In 1950 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge (Massachusetts) (Ergodic theory). In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Alexandra Bellow (Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea) is one of his PhD students .
The literary critic Michiko Kakutani (* 1955) is his daughter.
See also
Web links
- Literature by and about Shizuo Kakutani in the catalog of the German National Library
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Shizuo Kakutani. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Yale University Obituary
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kakutani, Shizuo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 角 谷 静 夫 (Japanese) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Japanese-American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 28, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Osaka Prefecture , Japan |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 17, 2004 |
| Place of death | New Haven , Connecticut, USA |