Warren M. Hirsch
Warren M. Hirsch (born August 3, 1918 in New York City , † July 9, 2007 in Sarasota , Florida ) was an American mathematician .
Hirsch studied mathematics at the City College of New York and at New York University and received his doctorate there in 1952 under James J. Stoker ( On the Maximum Cumulative Sum of Independent Random Variables ). During the Second World War , he dealt with the optimization of bombing by the United States Army Air Forces in France and Germany. In 1953 he became a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University . In 1988 he retired and researched and taught biomathematics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine for 11 years.
At first he dealt with linear optimization and in 1957 formulated the Hirsch conjecture about polytopes in a letter to George Dantzig , which was refuted by Francisco Santos in 2010 . With Dantzig he developed an algorithm named after both of them to solve the Hirsch-Dantzig problem of fixed costs (Fixed charge problem, presented in a RAND report 1954). He was one of the founders of the mathematical cannibalization theory and dealt with probability theory.
He is best known for mathematically modeling the spread of parasitic worms (such as schistosomiasis ). He has dealt with the topic since the late 1960s and used a sabbatical year to study parasitology and tropical medicine. The Nasell-Hirsch model for the spread of schistosomiasis, which he developed in the early 1970s with his doctoral student Ingemar Nasell (later professor at the Royal Technical University in Stockholm), was an important advance in mathematical epidemiology. It used Markov chains and led to important conclusions in the fight against schistosomiasis (e.g. that safe water supply was more important than the problem of latrines). It was based on preliminary work by George Macdonald. With Jean-Pierre Gabriel and Herman Hanisch, he expanded the model to other classes of parasitic worms, whereby the worms were classified according to their sexuality (reproduction strategy). To do this, they developed the theory of functional differential equations with delay.
He is an honorary doctorate from the University of Friborg in Switzerland (1989).
Web links
- Obituary in the New York Times, July 27, 2007
- Günter M. Ziegler, Who solved the Hirsch conjecture?, Documenta Mathemnatica 2010, pdf (with photo)
- Warren M. Hirsch in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Warren M. Hirsch in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
- ↑ Nasell, Hirsch, The transmission dynamics of schistosomiasis, Comm. Pure Appl. Math., Vol. 26, 1973, 395-453
- ↑ Nasell, Hirsch, A mathematical model of some helminthic infections, Comm. Pure Appl. Math., Vol. 25, 1972, pp. 459-477
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hirsch, Warren M. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 3, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 9, 2007 |
| Place of death | Sarasota , Florida |