William Caspar Graustein

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William Caspar Graustein (born November 15, 1888 in Cambridge (Massachusetts) , † January 22, 1941 there ) was an American mathematician .

Life

Graustein studied mathematics at Harvard University , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1910. He then specialized in differential geometry to conduct research in this area. In 1911 he graduated from Harvard University with a Master Accounts In the fall of 1911 he moved to Eduard Study at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Bonn , where he in 1913 with a thesis on analytic A real image of complex space curves with summa cum laude doctorate. When Study heard that the books by Felix Klein had inspired Graustein to study geometry, he first said that he was so utterly depraved . But then a close personal relationship developed and Study was of great influence on Graustein.

After a short time as an instructor at Harvard University, he went in 1914 as an assistant professor at the newly founded Rice Institute of the later Rice University in Houston . In the next four years he and his friend Griffith Conrad Evans built what was then the best mathematical center in the southern states . Towards the end of World War I , he served as a lieutenant on the Aberdeen Proving Ground (the US Army's ballistic research center). From 1919 until his death (in a traffic accident) he was a professor of mathematics at Harvard University. From 1932 to 1937 he headed the mathematics department.

He dealt with complex geometry and invariants of classical differential geometry, parallels on surfaces and harmonic minimal surfaces. According to him, and Hassler Whitney is set by Whitney Gray Stone named.

From 1936 to 1941 he was one of the editors of the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.

He had been married to the mathematician Mary Graustein since 1921 , with whom he spent every second summer in the Dolomites before the Second World War. In 1945 his older brother Archibald founded the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund in Havard, which is donated to a professorship named after him. In 1993 Archibald's son, geochemist William C. Graustein, added $ 50 million to the fund.

Honors

In 1924, Graustein was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In honor of William Caspar Graustein, George David Birkhoff and William Fogg Osgood , the American Mathematical Society has been awarding the Leroy P. Steele Prize since 1970 .

Fonts

Books:

  • with WF Osgood: Plane and solid analytic geometry, 1921
  • Introduction to higher geometry, 1930
  • Differential Geometry, 1935

Essays:

  • Invariant methods in classical differential geometry, Bulletin AMS, August 1930, pp. 489-521 (a French treatise by him on this was published in Belgium in 1929)
  • Parallelism and equidistance in classical differential geometry, Transactions of the AMS, July 1932, pp. 557-593
  • The geometry of Riemannian spaces, Transactions of the AMS, July 1934, pp. 542-585
  • Harmonic minimal surfaces, Transactions of the AMS, March 1940, pp. 173-206

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Graustein, William Caspar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1941
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts