Steven Vajda

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Steven Vajda , also Stefan Vajda, István Vajda, (born August 20, 1901 in Budapest , † December 10, 1995 in Brighton ) was a British mathematician who dealt with operations research and actuarial mathematics.

Life

Vajda moved with his family to Vienna in 1903 , where he grew up and studied at the university. First he studied at the Technical University of Vienna to become an engineer, switched to training as an actuary and finally studied mathematics at the University of Vienna . In 1925 he received his doctorate there ( sentences from group theory and algebra ) and went to the University of Göttingen for a year , where he among others Bartel Leendert van der Waerden , who got him a job in Romania. He then worked as an insurance employee in Vienna. There he belonged to the circle of the Vienna Circle and made friends with Karl Popper . In 1938 he fled from the National Socialists with his wife Eva (marriage in 1929) and two children to England (with a transit visa that his friend Karl Popper, who was in New Zealand, got for him). His parents died in the concentration camp and his sister was also missing after the war. After a brief internment on the Isle of Man at the beginning of World War II, he returned to England to work in the insurance industry (he had already published over a dozen articles in specialist journals) and finally with the Operations Research group of the British Admiralty. He stayed there until 1964, from 1952 as head of the mathematics group at the Admiralty Research Center in Teddington.

In 1964 he became Professor of Operations Research at the University of Birmingham , retired in 1967 and continued to work in the university's mathematical statistics department until 1973 when he became visiting professor at the University of Sussex . He stayed that way until his death in 1995.

He has published several books on operations research, mathematical optimization , experimental design and game theory , which made him internationally known.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society , an honorary doctorate from Brunel University and an honorary member of the Institute of Actuaries.

Fonts

  • Theory of Games and Linear Programming , London: Methuen, New York: Wiley, 1956, 1967
    • German translation: Theory of games and linear programming , De Gruyter 1962
  • Readings in Linear Programming , New York: Wiley and London: Pitman 1958 (2nd edition as Readings in Mathematical Programming 1962)
    • German translation: Linear programming: examples , Zurich, Verlag Industrielle Organization 1960
  • Introduction to Linear Programming and the Theory of Games , Wiley 1960
    • German translation: Introduction to linear planning and the theory of games , Oldenbourg 1961, 1966
  • Mathematical Programming , Addison-Wesley 1961, Dover 2009
  • Stochastic Programming , in J. Abadie Integer and Nonlinear Programming , Amsterdam, London 1970, chapter 14
  • A mathematician looks at Operations Research , 1966 (Inaugural Lecture)
  • Mathematics of Experimental Design: incomplete block designs and Latin squares , London: Griffin 1967
  • Patters and Configurations in Finite Places , London: Griffin 1967
  • Planing by Mathematics , New York: Barnes and Noble 1969
  • Probabilistic Programming , Academic Press 1972
  • Theory of Linear and Nonlinear Programming , London: Longman 1974
  • Problems in linear and nonlinear programming , London: Griffin 1975
  • Mathematics of Manpower Planning , Wiley 1978
  • Linear Programming: algorithms and applications , Chapman and Hall 1981
  • with Walter Ledermann, Emlyn Lloyd, Carol Alexander: Handbook of Applicable Mathematics: Supplement , Wiley 1990
  • Mathematical Games and How to Play Them , New York: Ellis Horwood 1992, Dover 2008
  • with Brian Conolly: A Mathematical Kaleidoscope: Applications in Industry, Business and Science , Chichester: Albion Publishing 1995
  • Fibonacci and Lucas Numbers, and the Golden Section: Theory and Applications , Chichester: Horwood and New York: Halsted Press 1989, Dover 2008

literature

  • Jakob Krarup, chapter on Vajda in Assad, Gass Profiles in Operations Research , Springer Verlag 2011
  • John Bather, obituary in The Independent, Jan. 1, 1996, online
  • John Bather: Stefan Vajda 1901-95 , J. Roy. Stat. Soc. A, Vol. 159, 1996, pp. 616-617.
  • F. Giannessi, S. Komlósi, T. Rapcsák (Eds.): New trends in mathematical programming. Homage to Steven Vajda, Kluwer 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Pinl Colleagues in Dark Times , DMV Annual Report, Volume 75, 1974, p. 205, entry by Stefan Vajda
personal data
SURNAME Vajda, Steven
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vajda, Stefan; Vajda, Istvan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1995
Place of death Brighton