Wilhelm Freiherr von Waldenfels

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Wilhelm Freiherr von Waldenfels (born February 22, 1932 in Bischofsheim an der Rhön ) is a German physicist and mathematician. He was professor for applied mathematics at the University of Heidelberg and dealt with the field of stochastics. His research focus was on quantum stochastics (i.e. the probability theory for non-commutative variables), which he was already grappling with intensively in the 1970s.

Wilhelm Freiherr von Waldenfels in 1969 in Berkeley

Life

Wilhelm von Waldenfels comes from the noble family Waldenfels and is the son of Oberforstmeister Ernst Freiherr von Waldenfels (1894–1980) and Charlotte Hack. From 1950 he studied physics at the TH Munich and the Sorbonne with a physics diploma at the TH Munich in 1956. He then worked as an assistant at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and from 1958 to 1966 as a research assistant at the Institute for Plasma Physics at Forschungszentrum Jülich . He received his doctorate under Heinz König at RWTH Aachen University in 1962 (a class of stationary Markov processes). From 1966 he was a research assistant at the Mathematical Institute of Saarbrücken University , where he qualified as a professor in 1966 in mathematics. In 1967 he became an adjunct professor in Saarbrücken and in 1968 he held a substitute professorship at the TH Munich (he refused an appointment as professor at the TH Munich). In 1969 he became professor and director of the Institute for Applied Mathematics at Heidelberg University. 1974/75 and 1983 to 1985 he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics. In 1997 he retired.

He dealt with the mathematical treatment of various stochastic problems in physics, for example pressure broadening of spectral lines and the quantum version of stochastic processes. In 1978 he gave a non-commutative ( quantum ) version of the central limit theorem with N. Giri (Montreal) .

In the 1960s he dealt with functional analytical aspects of probability theory and examined almost positive operators based on Markov semigroups .

In 1969 he was visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and he was several times visiting professor at Queen's University in Kingston (Ontario).

Roland Speicher is one of his doctoral students .

He has been married to Else Tschinkel since 1958 and has six sons and two daughters.

literature

  • Entry in Dagmar Drüll Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986 , Springer Verlag 2009

Fonts

  • Editor with Luigi Accardi Quantum probability and applications , Springer Verlag, part 2 to 5, 1985 to 1990 (workshops in Rome, Heidelberg, Oberwolfach)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ↑ An approach to the theory of pressure broadening of spectral lines , in Probability and Information II , Lecture Notes in Mathematics 296, 1973, pp. 19-69
  3. ^ Ito Solution of the quantum stochastic differential equation describing light emission and absorption , Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1055, 1984, pp. 284-311
  4. ↑ Giri, von Waldenfels An algebraic version of the central limit theorem , Journal for Probability Theory and Related Fields, Volume 42, 1978, pp. 129-134
  5. ^ Von Waldenfels Fast Positive Operators , Z. f. Probability Theory and Allied Areas, Volume 4, 1965, pp. 159-174
  6. ↑ There is also an entry for him on a genealogy website
personal data
SURNAME Waldenfels, Wilhelm Freiherr von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Waldenfels, Wilhelm von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Bischofsheim on the Rhön